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3NALISM' 

AND     THE 

^S  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


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PERSONALISM 

AND  THE 

PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

AN    APPRECIATION    OF    THE  WORK    OF 

BORDEN  PARKER  BOWNE 


BY 
RALPH  TYLER  FLEWELLING 

INTRODUCTORY  CHAPTER 

BY  RUDOLF  EUCKEN 


THE  METHODIST  BOOK  CONCERN 

NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


Copyright,  1915,  by 
RALPH  TYLER  FLEWELLING 


TO  B.  P.  B. 

WHOSE  WORDS  OF  TRUTH  WERE 
A  BEACON  LIGHT  TO  MANY  SOULS, 

AND 

TO  HIS   PUPILS 

WHOSE  LOVE  ABIDES  THROUGH 

TIME  AND  CHANGE 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword 11 

INTRODUCTORY 
Chapter  I 
The  Work  of  Borden  Parker  Bowne.    By 

Rudolf  Eucken 17 

Chapter  II 

The  Changing  Mood  of  the  Age 32 

Dominance  of  the  practical  in  modern  life — 
The  struggle  for  unity — The  present  crisis 
— The  new  task  of  philosophy. 

SECTION  I 

NATURALISM 

Chapter  III 

The  Modern  Spell  of  a  Greek  Phantom.  .  .     49 

The  ancient  dream  of  material  unity — The 

phantom  of  form  and  space — Perpetuation 

of    the    doctrine    through    Epicurean    and 

Stoic — Revival    and    development    of   the 

doctrine  in  modern  science — The  difficulty 

of  naturalistic  explanation. 

7 


CONTENTS 

Chapter  IV 

PAGE 

The  Evaded  Problems  of  Spencer's  Phil- 
osophy       59 

The  much-known  Unknowable — The  little- 
known  reality — The  theory  of  evolution — 
The  definition  of  life  and  mind. 

Chapter  V 

Bowne  as  an  Antagonist  of  Naturalism.  ...  73 
All  philosophical  values  hinge  on  the  definition 
of  reality — Is  God  immanent  Mover  or 
prime  Mover? — The  personality  of  the 
World-Ground — Is  Freedom  possible  in 
the  natural  world? 

SECTION  II 
IDEALISM 
Chapter  VI 

The  Kantian  Starting-Point 87 

Has  the  mind  a  task  in  experience? — Where 
can  we  find  a  permanent  world? — What 
lies  behind  the  appearance  of  things? — 
Can  we  "prove"  the  world  of  spirit? 

Chapter  VII 
The     Absolute     Philosophy,     Lotze      and 

Bowne 98 

Is  the  world  more  than  knowledge? — Of  what 
does  reality  consist? — Bowne's  debt  to 
Lotze — Bowne's  advance  on  Lotze's  sys- 
tem. 

8 


CONTENTS 

SECTION  III 
PRAGMATISM 

Chapter  VIII  ^^^^ 
The  Unmetaphysical  Pragmatism  of  Wil- 
liam James 113 

The  pragmatic  element  in  the  history  of 
philosophy — Can  the  pragmatic  test  of 
truth  be  maintained? — Are  space  and 
time  the  abiding  realities? — Pluralism  a 
confession  of  failure  to  unite  subject  and 
object — Can  pragmatic  pluralism  reach 
freedom  or  solve  the  problem  of  evil? 

Chapter  IX 
Bowne's  Pragmatism,  "A  Step  in  the  De- 
velopment OF  Philosophy" 130 

A  pragmatic  definition  of  Being — The  escape 
from  pluralism  and  absolutism  to  world- 
unity — The  ideal  nature  of  time  and  space 
— The  pragmatic  test  for  religious  values. 

SECTION  IV 
BOWNE  AND  SOME  PRESENT-DAY 
THINKERS 
Chapter  X 
Bergson,  The  Abstractions  of  an  Imper- 
sonal Philosophy 145 

Can  knowledge  and  life  be  brought  together 
on  the  empirical  basis? — Time  as  duration 

9 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

— The  "vital  impulse"  assumed  for  the 
sake  of  freedom — A  harmony  due  to  iden- 
tity of  impulsion — His  doctrine  of  knowl- 
edge. 

Chapter  XI 
EucKEN — The  Return  to  Spiritual  "Verity.  .  169 
Reality  must  include  more  than  things,  and 
more  than  ideas — Truth  must  have  a  com- 
mon validity — Eucken's  personal  idealism, 
the  realization  of  the  life  of  the  spirit — 
The  absence  of  the  Christological  interest. 

Chapter  XII 

Bowne's  Personalism  and  the  Problems  of 

Life 183 

Unity  possible  only  through  personalism — 
Personalism  and  freedom — Personalism  and 
the  problem  of  evil. 

Bibliography 197 

Index 201 


10 


FOREWORD 

The  essential  problems  of  philosophy  are 
few.  Out  of  three  or  four  fundamental 
presuppositions  flow  whole  systems  of 
thought.  Unless  the  fountain  itself  is  clear 
the  outflowing  streams  cannot  be  kept  so. 
The  nature  of  reality,  or  being,  is  the  funda- 
mental principle  by  which  all  systems  are  to 
be  judged.  Given  the  basic  attitude  toward 
this  problem,  it  is  easy  to  see  what  the 
logical  goal  will  be.  Next  to  the  question 
of  reality  are  those  of  space  and  time,  and 
the  relation  of  life  to  knowledge.  These  are 
the  main  questions  about  which  all  others 
hinge.  For  this  reason  these  terms  will 
appear  frequently  in  the  following  pages,  as 
we  attempt  to  trace  the  leading  philo- 
sophical ideas  down  to  modern  times,  and 
to  discover  their  relation  to  the  thought  of 
Bowne. 

He  would  have  been  the  last  to  claim 

11 


FOREWORD 

finality  for  his  system.  He  assumed  only 
to  clear  away  a  foundation  for  accurate 
thinking,  to  expose  the  common  sophistries 
of  thought,  and  to  give  a  basis  on  which  to 
build.  In  these  positions  he  felt  funda- 
mentally secure,  being  not  satisfied  to  speak 
"after  the  manner  of  the  scribes."  We  be- 
lieve the  future  will  amply  justify  his 
confidence. 

This  work  was  undertaken  reluctantly  in 
the  sense  that  the  writer  knew  there  were 
many  others  who  might  have  performed  the 
task  more  worthily;  with  ajacrity,  in  the 
consciousness  that  there  was  need  to  point 
out  the  place  which  Bowne's  system  occu- 
pies in  the  history  of  philosophy,  and  that 
more  than  five  years  have  passed  without 
this  being  done.  This  feeling  was  inten- 
sified by  the  expressed  desire  of  Professor 
Eucken  that  such  a  work  be  undertaken. 

The  author  does  not  aim  at  an  exhaustive 
discussion,  but,  rather,  at  a  brief  and  sug- 
gestive treatment  that  shall  define  for  the 
popular  mind  the  relation  of  Bowne's 
thought  to  other  philosophical  endeavors. 
To  forestall  disappointment  it  should  be 

12 


FOREWORD 

said  there  is  need  for  a  more  detailed  and 
technical  work  than  is  possible  within  the 
limits  of  so  small  a  volume.  To  make  a 
book  that  shall  be  brief  and  yet  clear  to 
the  nonprofessional  mind,  that  shall  drop 
technical  terms  whenever  possible  and  yet 
satisfy  the  exacting  student,  is  exceedingly 
diflScult.  The  writer  makes  no  pretense  of 
being  sufficient  for  so  great  a  task.  If, 
however,  this  effort  shall  succeed  in  ex- 
pressing the  deep  love  and  respect  felt  by 
one  whose  intellectual  horizons  were  en- 
larged by  the  touch  of  a  master  in  the 
realm  of  thought,  and  shall  lead  to  a  re- 
newed study  of  that  master's  work,  its 
purpose  will  have  been  achieved. 

Acknowledgments  are  due  to  Zion's 
Herald  for  the  use  of  materials  first  printed 
therein;  to  Dr.  Marshall  Livingstone  Per- 
rin,  who  transcribed  and  translated  Profes- 
sor Eucken's  chapter,  which  was  one  of  the 
American  addresses;  to  Dr.  Albert  C.  Knud- 
son  for  valuable  criticism;  and  to  Professor 
Eucken  himself,  for  his  generous  interest 
and  encouragement. 


13 


INTRODUCTORY 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  WORK  OF  BORDEN  PARKER 
BOWNE 

BY   RUDOLF   EUCKEN 

I  NEVER  had  the  pleasure  of  a  personal 
acquaintance  with  Dr.  Bowne,  and  felt  the 
touch  of  his  personality  only  through  our 
correspondence,  which  was,  indeed,  most 
hearty  and  intimate.  I  felt  that  our  rela- 
tion to  each  other  was  close  and  most 
friendly.  He  intended  to  visit  Jena  on  his 
way  to  Constantinople,  whither  he  expected 
to  take  a  trip  in  a  few  months ;  but  within  a 
week  after  receiving  the  letter  containing 
the  news  of  his  promised  visit  I  received 
the  announcement  of  his  untimely  death. 
It  is  a  sad  pleasure  to  me,  and  yet  a  satis- 
faction, to  be  able  to  give  this  evidence  of 
my  personal  admiration  for  Dr.  Bowne,  and 
for  his  personality  as  shown  in  his  writings. 

The  first  general  impression  which  one 
receives  in  taking  up  his  books  is  a  favorable 

17 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

one,  on  account  of  the  concise  and  definite 
form  in  which  they  are  written,  so  clear  in 
concept  and  straightforward  in  expression, 
not  at  all  confused  or  indistinct.  They  are 
pervaded  by  an  energy  and  manliness  which 
show  no  fear,  either  of  criticism  on  the  part 
of  the  half-enlightened,  or  of  the  dictum  of 
those  assuming  to  be  in  authority.  On  the 
contrary,  his  words  are  sympathetic  and  al- 
most tender  in  his  desire  to  recognize  what 
is  good  in  the  writings  of  others,  with  an 
unsparing  denial  of  what  he  considers  might 
do  harm.  His  works  show  a  personal 
warmth  which  gives  the  reader  almost  the 
impression  of  "confessions"  on  the  part  of 
a  living  and  strong  personality.  This  fea- 
ture is  especially  to  be  valued,  inasmuch  as 
he  himself  placed  a  very  high  estimate  upon 
personality.  He  says  to  the  reader,  "Above 
all  things  be  personal  in  the  expression  of 
truth  as  you  see  it." 

Secondly,  we  find  in  his  writings  his  own 
inmost  convictions  expressed  clearly,  and 
the  openness  of  his  "confessions"  is  a 
marked  and  fascinating  element  in  them. 
In   reading   some   philosophers   we   feel   in 

18 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

them  what  I  might  call  personal  untruth,  as 
in  Schopenhauer,  who  preaches  a  Hindu's 
self-abnegation  and  indifference,  while  we 
find  him  personally  the  genuine  epicure. 
The  question  arises  at  once,  What  have  his 
great  ideas  made  out  of  a  man,  if  in  his 
own  life  we  find  him  to  be  small?  On  the 
other  hand,  I  find  in  Spinoza  the  expression 
of  his  own  inner  convictions,  and  I  must 
have  respect  for  him  even  though  I  do  not 
agree  with  his  conclusions.  In  reading 
Bowne  one  respects  and  agrees,  for  there  is 
no  word  uttered  behind  which  one  does  not 
feel  the  man. 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  content  of  his 
works,  the  central  thought.  Bowne  has 
often  been  placed  by  the  side  of  Lotze,  the 
famous  Gottingen  professor  with  whom  he 
studied.  There  are  many  points  of  simi- 
larity as  well  as  many  differences. 

First,  Lotze  was  a  logician,  a  dialectician; 
he  struggled  to  overcome  the  material  or 
else  to  reconcile  it.  Lotze's  religion  we  feel 
rather  to  be  on  the  fringe  of  life,  and  it  is  a 
question  whether  it  ever  affects  the  central 
thought.     For  this  reason  it  does  not  exert 

19 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

any  strong  influence  upon  his  philosophy. 
Bowne,  on  the  contrary,  puts  rehgion  at 
the  very  center,  and  regards  it  as  the  crown 
of  being,  maintaining  that  metaphysics  and 
logic  are  enlightened  by  the  fundamental 
question  of  religion,  and  are  to  be  under- 
stood only  in  connection  with  it.  While 
Bowne  makes  a  definite  distinction  between 
religion  and  ethics,  he  makes  it  clear  that 
they  are  inseparable,  and  that  the  one 
gains  worth  in  the  light  of  the  other.  The 
relation  between  them  is  that  of  the  deep 
and  underlying  to  its  manifestation.  The 
two  should  not  be  studied  apart.  And, 
moreover,  the  keynote  of  both  lies  in  per- 
sonality, which  gives  value  to  religion  as 
well  as  to  ethics.  Studying  them  further, 
he  maintains  that  religion  includes  ethics. 
This  view  he  bases  upon  the  close  connec- 
tion of  religion  with  every  kind  of  moral 
progress  and  advancement. 

Religion  cannot  be  proved  or  explained 
in  ordinary  words;  neither  can  anything 
that  lies  deep  in  our  nature.  Aristotle  as- 
serts that  the  knowledge  of  anything  must 
be  derived  from  something  higher  than  it- 

20 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

self.  Religion,  therefore,  would  have  to  be 
proved  through  something  of  a  still  higher 
nature,  and  as  we  have  access  to  nothing 
higher,  it  must  remain  unproved.  Conse- 
quently, we  must  not  try  to  prove  it  but 
to  illustrate  it;  and  this  we  may  do  by 
showing  that  every  phenomenon  depends 
closely  upon  it,  and  also,  that  an  intelligent 
being  is  the  established  basis  of  every 
reality.  Hence  religion  lies  at  the  basis  of 
our  life  if  it  is  real;  and  if  this  be  denied, 
there  is  nothing  to  fall  back  upon.  Bowne 
maintains  that  any  other  attempt  to  ex- 
plain life  is  due  to  bad  thinking.  The 
practical  application  of  any  tenet  is  so 
important  in  Bowne's  philosophy  that  he 
takes  this  truth  almost  for  granted,  for  by 
it  our  very  life  becomes  exalted  and  val- 
uable. The  proof  of  religion,  then,  so  far 
as  it  can  be  proved,  is  the  creation  of  a  new 
life  and  a  new  world  in  a  man. 

Secondly,  the  content  of  the  world 
points  to  a  unity  in  the  universe.  We 
must  learn  to  see  more  unity  in  the  world's 
phenomena,  or,  rather,  behind  them.  The 
reign  of  law  in  all  existence  shows  that 
21 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

there  is  interaction  among  all  the  elements 
of  nature.  What  would  happen  if  the 
world  were  made  up  of  separate,  inde- 
pendent particles?  There  would  be  no 
mutual  interaction.  As  it  is,  we  know 
that  what  happens  in  A  produces  a  result 
in  B,  so  that  every  phenomenon  depends 
strictly  upon  a  cause,  and  proceeds  from 
something  else.  If  all  things  were  inde- 
pendent of  one  another,  nothing  could  re- 
sult. Again,  this  unity  must  rest  in  mind 
or  spirit,  for  it  is  not  to  be  found  in  the 
visible;  it  is  to  be  sought  in  the  invisible. 
And,  once  again,  no  spiritual  mind  can 
exist  without  personality,  for  otherwise  it 
would  be  shadowy  and  vague  and  have  no 
independent  existence  of  its  own.  Such  a 
mind  must  be  an  active,  self-existent  prin- 
ciple, and  such  a  principle  must  exist;  so 
far  Lotze  and  Bowne  advance  together. 
Bowne  further  adds  that  this  activity  in 
nature  must  proceed  from  a  God,  who  shall 
be  considered  the  active,  underlying  prin- 
ciple. As  Goethe  says  in  Faust,  "Nature  is 
the  garment  of  God." 

There    are    two    ways    of   viewing   phe- 

22 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

nomena:  first,  as  mere  appearance;  and, 
secondly,  with  some  Being  behind  them  as 
a  personal  Mind.  Now  every  language  has 
expressions  for  the  visible,  but  only  meta- 
phors for  the  spiritual  and  invisible.  Love 
is  inexpressible,  and  cannot  be  defined;  no 
more  can  personality.  The  manifestation 
can  be  described,  but  this  has  nothing  to 
depend  upon  without  a  deeper  basis  for  its 
very  existence.  Bowne  maintained,  in  the 
face  of  fierce  criticism,  that  we  must  be 
able  to  force  our  way  to  the  certainty  of 
some  such  basis.  It  is  wrong,  as  well  as 
foolish,  to  say  that  we  must  be  content 
with  the  visible  and  be  satisfied  with 
leaving  the  invisible  as  something  incom- 
prehensible; and  it  is  erroneous  to  say  that 
we  can  appreciate  only  the  visible.  If  we 
study  the  life  of  Luther,  shall  we  regard 
him  merely  as  a  phenomenon,  and  say  he 
had  no  real  existence?  No,  indeed.  Luther 
was  the  true  man  behind  it  all,  and  his  acts 
were  the  expression  of  this  hidden  existence. 
We  must  believe  in  a  creative  power  behind 
all  phenomena  or  we  are  not  true  even  to 
our  own  subjective  lives. 

23 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

I  should  like  to  recommend  to  your 
younger  men  a  good  subject  for  a  disserta- 
tion, and  it  would  be,  "Bowne's  Philosophy 
in  Relation  to  that  of  Kant,"  together  with 
the  objections  which  Bowne  would  raise 
against  the  latter.  Hegel,  too,  makes  a  great 
deal  of  "thought  processes."  To  all  this 
Bowne  replies:  "All  right,  if  a  personal 
existence  is  recognized  as  a  basis  for  them; 
otherwise,  there  is  no  reality  to  these  proc- 
esses." Bowne  is  a  sharp  critic,  not  un- 
kind, not  fault-finding,  but  severely  pun- 
ishing those  writers  who  assume  to  be 
contented  with  the  natural,  the  visible,  or 
with  the  impersonal  spirit.  He  demands 
personal  spiritual  life,  and  consequently^  a 
living  personal  God,  out  of  whom  proceeds 
all  power,  and  who  is  the  active  principle 
from  whom  all  phenomena  set  forth.  An- 
other thesis  that  I  would  suggest  to  young 
men  is,  "Bowne  as  an  Opponent  of  the  Ma- 
terialists," for,  indeed,  he  was  the  chief  op- 
ponent of  naturalism.  Naturalists  deny  the 
metaphysical  and  take  the  visible  as  the 
basis  of  their  so-called  metaphysics.  This 
is  illogical,  as  it  turns  effect  into  cause.    So 

24 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

Bowne  criticizes  evolutionists  for  commonly 
confusing  the  ideas  of  cause  and  effect. 
The  visible,  which  is,  after  all,  only  the 
effect,  is  assumed  to  proceed  and  develop  of 
itself.  Bowne  goes  farther.  He  not  only 
makes  these  truths  which  he  asserts  the 
basis  of  all  real  theism;  he  has  developed 
a  metaphysics  of  theism.  He  does  not 
simply  posit  certain  truths  of  theism,  but 
treats  all  these  from  a  metaphysical  stand- 
point, and  this  is  of  great  value  to-day  in 
the  field  of  philosophy. 

If  we  consider  the  content  of  religion  ac- 
cording to  Bowne  and  his  development  of 
it,  we  find  three  leading  points  which  mark 
the  chief  directions  of  his  thought:  First, 
religion  consists  in  life,  and  not  in  teaching 
or  doctrine;  second,  the  kernel  of  religion 
is  ethical,  and  religion  is  the  lodestar  of 
ethics,  with  which  it  is  inseparably  con- 
nected; third,  religion  is  common  to  all 
humanity.  I  might  add  as  a  possible  defi- 
nition of  Bowne's  standpoint  that  religion 
is  the  spiritual  experience  of  humanity  and 
is  manifested  in  the  individual. 

Concerning  the  first  point,  he  maintains 
25 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

that  religion  means  life,  and  relates  to  life 
as  a  whole,  as  well  as  to  the  whole  life.    In 
German}^   certain   phases   of   this   thought 
have  been  emphasized  separately,  but  never 
grasped  comprehensively.    With  Kant  reli- 
gion is  a  moral  matter,  and  manifested  in 
the  individual  as  will.    For  Schleiermacher 
it  was  a  matter  of  feeling,  and  showed  itself 
in  the  emotions;  while  Hegel  maintained 
that  it  was  a  form  of  intelligence.     These 
elements,    which    have    been    separated   in 
Germany,  are  for  Bowne  only  different  fea- 
tures   of    one    thought.      He    would    have 
religion  embrace  all  forms  of  life  together, 
and  he  maintains  that  it  should  influence 
and  ennoble  every  act  and  thought.    Hence 
it   is   impossible   to   base   religion   on   any 
fixed    doctrine.      The   fundamental    beliefs 
underlying  religion  from  the  start  should 
be    maintained,    but    we    must    allow    the 
development   from    time    to    time    of   new 
theologies.     While  fundamental  truths  are 
eternal,  man  is  still  developing,  and  conse- 
quently these  eternal  truths  must  be  mani- 
fested in  the  different  stages  of  man's  de- 
velopment in  different  ways. 

26 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

These  truths  do  not  become  new,  but 
are  newly  presented.  So  we  find  in  the 
education  of  children  that  the  same  truths 
appear  to  them  in  different  lights  as  they 
grow  up.  True  religion  will  change  its 
theology,  while  the  underlying  ideas  are  not 
changeable.  There  has  been  too  much  ab- 
stract speculation  apart  from  the  concrete 
experiences  of  life,  too  much  holding  to 
abstract  conceptions.  Experience  is  the 
true  teacher,  and  through  her  teacliing  we 
can  grasp  new  thoughts  and  new  views 
wathout  endangering  the  eternal  truths  by 
abstract  speculation.  The  old  philosophy 
was  established  upon  the  universe  as  we 
understand  it,  and  upon  this  doctrine  was 
built  up,  and  then  life  was  explained  ac- 
cording to  that  theory;  whereas  Bowne 
starts  with  life,  out  of  which  grows  the 
world  of  experience,  and  upon  this  rests 
the  doctrine,  which  must  change  as  ex- 
perience changes.  Another  good  thesis 
would  be  "Bowne's  Definition  of  Life." 

James  leads  us  back  to  the  practical.  So 
does  Bowne,  but  with  a  different  meaning, 
for  with  him,  behind  the  practical  stands 

27 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

the  metaphysical.  This  is  a  new  step  in  the 
development  of  philosophy.  This  "practi- 
cal" is  not  that  which  means  useful,  nor 
that  which  rests  upon  utilitarian  grounds. 
Still  another  subject  for  a  thesis  would  be 
"The  Definition  of  the  Practical  as  used  by 
Aristotle  and  Later  Philosophers,  up  to 
Bowne."  This  would  help  to  define  his 
position.  I  would  particularly  urge  the 
study  of  Bowne's  philosophy,  as  there  is 
always  danger  lest  tradition,  which  crystal- 
lizes soon  after  a  man's  death,  may  put  his 
works  in  a  wrong  light. 

Bowne's  contention  is  that  the  spiritual 
basis  of  life  is  not  new,  but  it  becomes  new 
in  its  forms  of  development.  God  does  not 
develop,  but  it  is  man  that  changes  and 
develops.  This  is  shown  characteristically 
in  the  development  of  religious  ideas;  for 
instance,  since  mediaeval  times,  when  the 
dogmas  of  Catholicism  were  universally  ac- 
cepted. The  study  of  theological  develop- 
ment as  a  manifestation  of  religion  in  the 
varied  experiences  of  humanity  cannot  but 
bring  all  views  and  doctrines  into  a  clear 
and  healthy  relation  to  one  another. 

28 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

Our  second  point  refers  to  the  relation  of 
ethics  to  rehgion,  upon  which  we  have  al- 
ready touched.  Bownc,  differing  from  the 
men  of  the  Illumination  period,  as  well  as 
from  Kant,  declares  that  religion  is  dis- 
tinctly ethical,  that  ethics  is  the  mere  form 
of  religion.  Without  the  latter,  ethics 
would  have  no  life,  content,  or  character,  so 
that  ethics  depends  wholly  upon  religion. 
We  must  not  lose  our  bearings  by  a  con- 
sideration of  the  ethical  as  such,  but  regard 
it  as  the  medium  through  which  religion 
shines  and  produces  new  life,  and  that  the 
two  exert  a  mutual  influence.  So  Bowne 
would  have  us  hold  no  harsh  or  crude  ideas 
of  God's  relation  to  the  world.  Theologies 
of  the  past  held  that  God  created  the  world 
for  his  own  glory.  This  was  the  severe  and 
strict  doctrine  of  the  Jesuits,  as  well  as  of 
the  Calvinists.  Over  against  this  Bowne 
would  have  us  believe,  with  modern  Chris- 
tians, that  he  created  the  world  out  of  the 
fulness  of  his  love.  All  religion  and  wor- 
ship would  be  a  form  of  love,  and  would 
mean  the  worship  of  a  loving  Being,  not  of 
a  tyrant.  The  Christian  should  be  cheerful 
29 


PEIiSONALISM  AND  THE 

and  joyous  because  his  religion  should  make 
him  so.  We  should  be  glad  that  God 
created  the  world  and  us,  and  that  he  will 
save  us. 

The  third  point  is  one  that  needs  em- 
phasizing, particularly  among  Protestants, 
who  are  apt  to  view  religion  too  subjec- 
tively. Bowne  urges  that  there  are  many 
ways  of  arriving  at  religion.  There  are 
some  that  have  the  experience  of  perceiving 
God's  love  all  at  once,  whereupon  a  sudden 
change  comes  over  the  man's  whole  nature. 
Such  persons  are  those  whose  temperament 
is  susceptible  to  contrasts;  but  this  is  only 
one  form  of  the  manifestation  of  God,  and 
quite  dependent  upon  the  individual.  There 
are,  on  the  other  hand,  many  in  whom  this 
change  takes  place  more  quietly.  We  must 
only  be  sure  of  a  complete  turning  about, 
and  not  judge  of  the  manner,  but  of  the 
results.  Religion  leads  to  lives,  not  to 
theologies,  for  it  is  based  upon  the  funda- 
mental principles  of  life,  and  not  upon 
temperament  or  environment.  In  these 
ideas  of  Bowne  we  find  a  reconciliation  of 
opposing  views,  of  earnest  seriousness  and 

30 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

happy  enjoyment,  of  prol)lems  and  con- 
flicts, combined  with  hope  and  joyous 
courage.  We  must  sympathize  with  the 
many  forms  of  Hfe  and  experience,  with  the 
serious  and  the  merry;  and  our  children 
should  learn  that  they  may  combine  the 
liberty  of  freedom  and  the  soberness  of 
earnest  effort,  both  in  their  mental  and  in 
their  spiritual  development. 

Dr.  Bowne  was  a  philosopher  of  America, 
and  as  such  all  America  may  be  proud  of 
him  and  of  his  memory.  His  strong  per- 
sonality showed  itself  in  such  vigorous  ef- 
fort; his  humor  was  so  happy  and  flashed 
forth  so  frequently  in  the  midst  of  the 
most  serious  work,  that  moroseness  and 
melancholy  were  impossible  to  him.  He 
remained  fresh  and  youthful  in  spirit  to  the 
end.  Even  in  his  last  letter  to  me  he  seemed 
to  be  more  than  ever  pervaded  with  a  spirit 
of  youth  and  joyous  living.  It  is  given  us 
to  say,  as  did  Goethe  of  his  friend  Schiller, 
*'He  belonged  to  us." 


31 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  CHANGING  MOOD  OF  THE 
AGE 

Dominance  of  the  Practical  in 
Modern  Life 

In  a  passage  of  the  "Stones  of  Venice" 
Ruskin  speaks  of  the  high  architectural 
beauty  of  the  cathedral  of  Torcello,  built 
by  the  Venetians  as  they  took  refuge  from 
their  pursuers,  on  the  half  submerged  sand 
dunes  of  the  Adriatic.  He  says,  "The  ac- 
tual condition  of  the  exiles  who  built  the 
cathedral  of  Torcello  is  exactly  typical  of 
the  spiritual  condition  which  every  Chris- 
tian ought  to  recognize  in  himself,  a  state 
of  homelessness  on  earth,  except  so  far  as 
he  can  make  the  Most  High  his  habitation."^ 

A  more  recent  writer,  speaking  of  the 
present  age,  has  said:  "When  man  was 
doubtful  if  he  would  see  to-morrow's  sun- 


'  Stones  of  Venice,  vol.  ii.  p.  13. 

32 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

rise,  he  built  as  if  not  dreaming  of  a  perish- 
able home.  To-day,  when  he  cannot  believe 
that  death  will  touch  him,  and  his  orderly 
life  stretches  forward  as  an  endless  end  of 
the  world,  he  will  leave  for  the  amazement 
of  future  ages  the  Crystal  Palace  and  the 
City  Temple  and  the  Peabody  Building."^ 

These  descriptions  present  by  vivid  con- 
trast the  material  basis  of  the  changing 
mood  of  the  age.  Whatever  men  build, 
whether  it  be  of  brick  and  stone,  institu- 
tions of  government  and  civilization,  or 
systems  of  thought  and  education,  the 
sense  of  dependence  upon  the  Eternal,  the 
attitude  toward  the  things  not  seen,  will 
inevitably  write  itself  into  all  their  work. 

The  outward  and  material  circumstances 
of  man's  position  on  the  earth  will  reflect 
themselves  in  his  philosophy  and  dictate 
the  mood  of  his  thought.  The  age  of  grind- 
ing poverty,  of  elemental  struggle  toward 
freedom  and  knowledge,  is  always  an  age 
of  faith  and  optimism.  The  age  of  material 
fullness,  when  man  seems  to  have  almost 
within  his  grasp  the  secrets  of  the  universe, 

2  Masterman,  In  Peril  of  Change,  p.  170. 

33 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

the  ultimate  triumph  over  poverty,  ig- 
norance, and  the  brute  forces  of  nature, 
is  the  age  when  pessimism  and  despair 
range  deepest.  The  human  spirit  is  so 
constituted  that  when  man  must  take  up 
an  heroic  struggle,  in  which  life  and  the 
most  precious  interests  are  daily  put  in 
jeopardy,  his  dreams  and  faiths  exalt  him 
to  the  skies.  When  these  material  things 
and  the  external  forms  for  which  he  fought 
seem  forever  assured,  he  is  plunged  into 
doubt  and  morbid  self-examination  by  his 
unsatisfied  soul. 

To  understand  the  philosophical  mood  of 
our  own  age  it  is  necessary  to  keep  in  mind 
the  dominating  elements  in  our  material 
progress.  The  prevalence  of  scientific  in- 
vestigation and  the  growth  of  the  scientific 
spirit  have  given  us  a  hitherto  unknown 
environment  for  our  thought.  With  the 
mastery  of  physical  forces  the  old  horror 
of  nature  has  passed.  With  it  has  gone  a 
great  deal  that  was  merely  tradition,  preju- 
dice, and  superstition.  Beyond  the  borders 
of  childhood  we  live  in  no  magic  world. 
Laws  of  nature  are  to  us  as  an  open  book 

34 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

and  in  many  minds  the  only  book  possessing 
any  authority.  Even  the  common  man 
feels  that  he  has  deciphered,  or  will  have 
deciphered  for  him  in  the  near  future,  the 
last  of  nature's  secrets.  There  is  to  be 
nothing  left  at  which  to  wonder.  We  are 
amazed  no  longer  at  the  vastness  of  the 
universe,  at  its  marvelously  interlocking 
processes,  or  at  its  hints  of  Final  Purpose; 
but,  rather,  at  ourselves  that  we  know  so 
much.  In  the  spirit  of  Goldsmith's  lines, 
we  can  say  of  man  that 

Still  the  wonder  grows 
That  one  small  head  can  carry  all  he  knows. 

The  most  startling  discoveries  in  nature 
provoke  but  a  momentary  enthusiasm.  We 
are  masters  of  nature. 

With  the  pa'ssing  of  the  old  feeling  toward 
nature  has  come  a  new  acquaintance  among 
the  peoples  of  the  earth.  Nothing  is  per- 
haps more  startling  than  the  adoption  by 
pagan  and  strange  bloods  of  modern  inven- 
tions, the  latest  philosophies  and  schemes 
of  education.  That  which  has  been  the 
product  of  generations  of  struggle  is  sud- 
35 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

denly  appropriated  by  men  of  other  races 
and  civilizations.  We  are  chagrined  at  the 
ease  and  adaptabihty  at  our  own  game  of 
genius  and  invention  of  these  strange  and 
long-despised  peoples.  Whether  we  wish  it 
or  not,  they  represent  mighty  forces  to  be 
reckoned  with.  The  overcoming  of  space 
and  time  sets  them  in  our  own  dooryard. 
Tokyo,  Peking,  and  Calcutta  are  nearer 
than  London,  Paris,  and  New  York  were 
yesterday.  We  are  reminded  of  their 
thought  in  every  review,  of  their  deeds  in 
the  morning  paper,  and  we  eat  of  their 
products  at  every  breakfast  table.  A  new 
world  of  human  relationships  has  dawned 
upon  us,  in  which  we  are  burdened  with  a 
responsibility  which  we  cannot  escape. 

The  resources  of  science  have  been  put 
at  the  service  of  the  industrial  world.  The 
discoveries  of  the  past  generation  have 
revolutionized  the  world  of  commerce  and 
labor.  The  comforts  and  luxuries  of  life 
have  vastly  increased.  Great  fortunes  have 
resulted,  and  with  them  an  overwhelming 
eagerness  to  discover  the  sesame  of  wealth. 
The   contribution   of   science   to   this   new 

36 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

world  of  material  things  has  elevated  scien- 
tific dogma  into  unquestioned  power.  The 
gravest  criticism  and  deepest  slur,  that 
according  to  the  average  man  can  be  cast,  is 
the  criticism  and  the  slur  of  being  unscien- 
tific. Little  room  is  left  for  the  aesthetic, 
the  idealistic,  or  the  spiritual.  To  such  an 
age  it  has  seemed,  speaking  in  the  words 
of  Noyes's  "Resurrection,"  that 

Love  was  too  small,  too  human  to  be  found 

In    that    transcendent   source   whence    love   was 
born; 

We  talked  of  "forces":  heaven  was  crowned 
With  philosophic  thorn. 

The  demands  made  upon  all  departments 
of  life  have  thus  become  intensely  practical 
and  utilitarian.  What  does  it  accomplish? 
How  great  are  the  returns?  These  are  the 
questions  that  are  constantly  asked,  not 
only  in  the  world  of  economics,  but  also  in 
the  worlds  of  philosophy  and  religion.  The 
demand  of  pragmatism  is  the  demand  of 
the  modern  spirit  elevated  into  a  test  for 
truth.  And  this  demand  is  not  without  its 
basis  of  sanity  and  justice.  Men  are 
37 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

wearied  of  theories  and  systems  which  ap- 
pear divorced  from  every  practical  interest. 
But  too  often  the  pragmatic  question  is 
made  so  individuaHstic  and  so  fragmentary 
that  truth  becomes  a  mere  utihty  for  the 
moment  and  occasion  only. 

To  all  of  this  is  added  the  feeling  that  in 
our  fullness  and  material  prosperity  we  have 
no  need  to  be  comforted  either  by  phil- 
osophy or  religion.  The  former  contents 
itself  too  largely  with  the  explanation  of 
the  material,  and  the  latter  approaches  an 
unredeemed  world  with  a  timidity  that 
leaves  no  place  for  authoritative  appeal. 
The  indecision  and  blindness  of  a  great 
multitude  is  voiced  in  Swinburne's  "Watch 
in  the  Night": 

I  halt  and  hearken  behind 

If  haply  the  hours  will  go  back 

And  return  to  the  dear  dead  light, 

To  the  watch  fires  and  stars  that  of  old 

Shone  where  the  sky  now  is  black. 

The  Struggle  for  Unity 

The  main  streams  of  philosophic  thought, 
materialism,  and  idealism  have  run  their 

38 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

course,  and  neither  has  been  able  to  bring 
philosophic  peace,  except  in  the  minds  of 
their  most  extreme  partisans.  To  the 
former  has  been  given  the  popular  role  by 
reason  of  her  close  allegiance  with  practical 
science,  and  the  inability  of  the  average 
man  to  sense  the  problems  that  hedge  her 
way.  To  common  sense,  all  the  ways  of 
materialism  are  pleasantness,  and  all  her 
paths  are  peace.  The  world  is  just  what  it 
appears  to  be.  Material  atoms  are  con- 
jured up  to  impinge  upon  nerves;  and 
mind,  thought,  and  purpose  are  the  easy 
result  of  mechanical  forces.  Memory  fol- 
lows the  grooves  plowed  in  the  brain  by 
yesterday's  experience,  while  other  mem- 
ories await  the  expectant  call,  filed  carefully 
away,  according  to  the  best  modern  business 
methods,  in  their  appropriate  pigeonholes. 
When  all  is  so  easily  imagined,  he  would 
seem  to  be  only  a  fool  who  would  question. 
In  this  system  nothing  is  denied  the  im- 
agination and  only  the  facts  are  wanting. 
On  such  a  theory  everything  becomes  as 
sun-clear,  from  the  first  accidental  jiggling 
of  atoms  to  the  philosopher  at  the  other  end 
39 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

of  the  line,  as  the  continuous  juvenile 
tragedy  of  The  House  that  Jack  Built.  Un- 
fortunately for  the  comfort  of  materialism, 
the  barrenness  of  the  supposed  solution  is 
coming  to  the  attention  of  her  own  dis- 
ciples, and  we  have  the  old  garment  patched 
with  the  new  cloth  of  pragmatism  and 
Creative  Evolutions.  These  reach  the  sol- 
emn decision  that  "universe"  is  a  term  of 
delusion  and  must  yield  to  pluralism  or  at 
least  to  dualism. 

Nor  has  professional  idealism  been  more 
fortunate  in  the  endeavor  to  unite  the 
sundered  sides  of  consciousness.  The  world 
of  materialism  has  been  one  in  which  matter 
was  all  and  spirit  nothing,  but  the  world  of 
idealism  has  been  one  in  which  the  reality 
of  matter  has  been  altogether  denied.  She 
has  been  no  more  able  to  command  men 
with  authority  than  has  her  opponent.  The 
material  world  bulks  so  large  in  the  com- 
mon experience  that  it  is  ever  difficult  to 
convince  men  that 

The  solid  earth,  the  round  sun, 

And  all  the  visible  world  of  sight  and  sound. 

Are  but  the  phantasmagoria  of  a  dream. 

40 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

Thus  the  ancient  battle  between  ma- 
teriaHsm  and  idealism  has  raged  since  the 
days  of  the  Greek  philosophers,  and  not 
until  our  own  generation  have  the  con- 
flicting arguments  been  sufficiently  sifted 
and  analyzed  to  show  that  neither  bald 
materialism  nor  absolute  idealism  can  pre- 
sent a  possible  solution  to  the  enigma  of 
the  universe. 

The  Present  Crisis 

We  have  to-day  the  natural  successors  of 
idealism,  who  cling  to  the  thought  of  unity, 
thrust  out  by  time  and  criticism  from  the 
ancient  peace  of  an  absolutism  whose  only 
ultimate  reality  is  the  divine  Spirit,  hard 
pressed  to  answer  the  problem  of  evil.  If 
all  we  see  is  the  manifestation  of  the  Divine, 
whence  comes  evil  in  the  world?  This  is 
the  insistent  question  cast  at  the  spokes- 
men of  idealism.  Thinking  men  are  impa- 
tient of  any  denial  of  the  reality  of  pain, 
evil,  or  sorrow,  in  an  effort  to  save  the 
character  of  God.  The  sense  of  suffering 
and  injustice  is  more  acute  than  ever  in 
the  history  of  the  world.  A  God  that  will 
4il 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

cause  suffering,  pain,  and  evil  they  will 
repudiate.  Even  that  human  being  seems 
a  monster  who  will  not  do  his  best  to  alle- 
viate misery  of  every  sort.  How  much 
more  will  they  despise  a  Supreme  Being  so 
obtuse  to  moral  responsibility  as  to  create 
men  for  pain!  The  supreme  question  of 
the  age  for  idealism  as  well  as  for  Theism 
is  how  to  maintain  a  Moral  Causal  Intelli- 
gence in  the  face  of  existent  evil  and 
suffering. 

It  might  be  thought  that,  in  view  of  these 
conditions,  the  way  of  the  materialists  would 
be  easy.  A  cursory  examination  will  show, 
however,  that  it  is  no  longer  possible  for 
materialism  to  imagine  that  she  speaks  in 
terms  of  universe.  Even  the  most  obtuse 
materialist  is  to-day  forced  to  admit  a 
power  and  a  reality,  which,  whether  he 
knows  or  not,  is  not  provided  for  in  his 
system.  He  has  before  him  the  expedient 
of  a  dualism  somewhat  after  the  fashion  of 
Mr.  Bergson's,  or  he  may  resort  with  Mr. 
James  to  a  pluralistic  world.  But  such  a 
universe  falls  more  and  more,  the  farther  we 
search,  into  a  disjointed  and  ever-dissolving 

42 


PROBLEMS  OF  riULOSOrilY 

individualism  in  which  all  realities  disappear 
at  the  touch  like  Apples  of  Sodom.  The 
lack  of  order  and  purpose  is  mistaken  for 
freedom,  and  much  dilated  upon.  The  tum- 
brils daily  cart  the  Theists  to  the  slaughter 
in  the  interests  of  the  new-found  emancipa- 
tion, and  there  is  not  missing  the  grim  joy 
of  the  populace  at  the  effectiveness  of  the 
guillotine  of  freedom.  Still  there  is  ever 
present  at  the  feast  of  joy  a  lurking  Ban- 
quo's  ghost  of  Purposive  Intelligence  that 
refuses  to  keep  decently  buried;  the  Great 
Perhaps,  for  which  the  heart  of  man  cries 
out  like  a  lonely  child  in  the  night. 

Just  when  we're  safest  there's  a  sunset  touch, 
A  fancy  from  a  flower-bell,  some  one's  death, 
A  chorus-ending  from  Euripides — 
And  that's  enough  for  fifty  hopes  and  fears 
As  old  and  new  at  once  as  nature's  self 
To  rap  and  knock  and  enter  in  our  soul. 

The  New  Task  of  Philosophy 

The  new  task  of  philosophy  is  the  recon- 
ciliation of  these  contrasting  views.     Much 
critical  work  has  already  been  done  which 
makes  repetition  unnecessary.     There  is  a 
43 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

generally  clear  recognition  of  the  real  issues 
at  stake.  The  individual  mood  toward  one 
or  the  other  side  will  greatly  influence  the 
result  in  any  particular  case,  but  yet  there 
is  reason  to  hope  that  we  can  come  to  an 
understanding  of  the  issues  involved,  if  we 
cannot  unite  in  a  common  explanation.  It 
is  true  that  the  old,  old  questions  of  the 
nature  of  reality,  of  Creative  Purpose  and 
evil,  of  unity  or  diversity,  of  freedom  or 
necessity,  will  remain;  but  in  the  coming 
age  we  shall  approach  them  from  a  new 
angle  and  see  them  in  a  new  light.  While 
we  cannot  expect  to  settle  them,  we  may 
hope  to  work  toward  a  solution.  We  may 
find  a  standpoint  from  which  life  may  go 
on  without  despair  or  the  eclipse  of  faith 
in  the  things  of  the  spirit. 

In  the  realization  of  this  new  task  of 
philosophy  we  believe  that  the  future  will 
have  to  reckon  with  the  work  of  one  of  our 
foremost  philosophers  whom  Rudolf  Eucken 
is  pleased  to  call  a  'Svorld  philosopher." 
His  purpose  was  to  show  how  the  contrast- 
ing and  apparently  irreconcilable  questions 
might  find  solution  and  common  ground  in 

44 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

the  recognition  of  personality.  Eucken  de- 
clares that  "we  need  something  eternal  to 
bind  the  different  ages  together,  but  this 
eternal  has  grown  dim  amid  our  doubts  and 
struggles."^  This  is  true  f.or  history  and 
for  individual  thought  as  well.  This  need 
Bowne  would  meet  with  his  doctrine  of 
personalism.  To  show  the  implications  of 
this  theory  with  relation  to  the  different 
phases  of  thought  is  the  purpose  of  this 
volume. 

Because  we  believe  that  the  case  for 
faith  has  not  been  closed,  nor  its  last  word 
spoken,  we  come  to  the  task  in  the  mood 
of  Swinburne's  lines: 

The  tides  and  the  hours  run  out, 
And  the  seasons  of  death  and  of  doubt, 
The  night  watches  bitter  and  sore. 

Even  the  clamors  and  confusions  of  war- 
ring peoples  will  confirm  the  prophecy  of 
our  Lord,  and  be  but  the  birth-pangs  of  a 
better  world.  The  night  ebbs  away  and 
across  the  hills  lies  the  dawn. 


^  Christianity  and  the  New  Idealism,  p.  38. 

45 


SECTION  I 
NATURALISM 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  MODERN  SPELL  OF  A  GREEK 
PHANTOM 

The  Ancient  Dream  of  Material 

Unity 

Whatever  it  may  imply,  the  human 
mind  has  ever  shown  a  remarkable  thirst 
to  achieve  unity.  The  apparent  relation- 
ships in  a  world  of  great  diversity  make 
possible  the  belief  that  all  things  proceed 
from  the  same  source.  The  world  of  things 
is  assumed  to  be  a  universe  and  the  mind 
of  man  has  never  been  able  permanently  to 
rest  in  any  other  assumption.  Unity  is 
sought,  whether  in  a  material  protoplasm 
from  which  all  things  have  developed,  or 
in  a  final  ground  of  divine  Thought  or 
Purpose.  Between  the  two  ideas  the  philo- 
sophical world  has  been  divided  from  early 
times  into  the  opposing  camps  of  material - 
49 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

ism  and  idealism.  The  search  of  the  early 
Greek  school  was  for  this  primal  essence  of 
things.  Certain  conclusions  then  reached 
have  exerted  an  overwhelming  influence  in 
the  scientific  thought  of  our  own  age.  It 
is  interesting  to  glance  at  the  movement  in 
its  beginnings.  The  great  contribution  of 
Greek  philosophy  to  modern  science  was 
the  theory  that  the  material  world  is  made 
up  of  atoms.  With  Leucippus,  the  founder 
of  the  theory,  the  atoms  were  countless, 
infinite  in  variety,  imperceptibly  small,  hav- 
ing only  the  quality  of  filling  space.  They 
were  in  motion  from  eternity,  and  so  held 
within  them  all  the  possibilities  of  pro- 
ducing the  visible  world.  The  importance 
of  this  theory  for  science  lay  in  the  fact 
that  all  qualitative  differences  could  be  ac- 
counted for  by  varying  the  quantities  and 
combination  of  atoms. 

To  the  thoughtful  it  is  at  once  apparent 
that  with  the  materialist  the  atom  is  en- 
dowed with  that  magic  and  with  those 
undiscoverable  powers  which  the  idealist 
ascribes  to  a  World-Soul,  or  Divine  Intelli- 
gence.    In  the  case  of  the  materialist  the 

50 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

unaccountable  powers  of  the  fabled  atom 
are  overlooked  in  the  beginning  because 
they  seem  insignificant,  yet  when  some  real 
explanation  is  needed  they  are  marshaled 
in  such  masses  as  to  become  suddenly 
visible,  and  sufficient  to  account  for  any 
result.  Of  course  what  has  actually  taken 
place  is  a  flight  of  the  imagination.  Whether 
it  has  represented  truly  the  order  of  nature 
we  are  left  in  confused  doubt  if  we  be  un- 
imaginative souls. 

Protagoras  added  to  the  atomism  of 
Leucippus  the  further  doctrine  that  per- 
ception itself  rests  upon  the  motion  of 
atoms,  and  that  perceiving  and  thinking 
are  psychologically  identical.  All  percep- 
tions that  come  to  us  are  true  for  us,  just 
as  they  appear.  Hence  the  famous  maxim 
loved  by  the  modern  Humanist,  "Man  is 
the  measure  of  all."  Perceptions,  under 
this  scheme,  are  only  relatively  true.  There 
can  be  no  universal  standard  of  truth. 
However,  it  must  be  noted  that  in  this 
system  perception  is  something  other  than 
the  perceiving  subject,  and  is  likewise  some- 
thing apart  from  the  object  perceived.   This 

51 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

discrepancy,  though  apparent,  remains  un- 
answered. So  soon  in  our  search  for  ma- 
teriahstic  unity  have  we  happened  on  a 
divided  world. 

The  Phantom  of  Form  and  Space 

With  Democritus,  the  system  of  material- 
ism is  at  last  in  full  flower.  Observing  the 
relativity  of  Protagoras'  scheme  of  percep- 
tion, Democritus  transcends  it  to  assert  the 
possibility  of  knowledge  of  the  real  through 
thought.  Both  Democritus  and  Plato  were 
in  this  sense  rationalistic,  but  Plato's  ra- 
tionalism took  an  ethical  turn.  He  sought 
the  knowledge  of  the  true  Being  as  a  means 
to  virtue.  His  philosophy  grew  out  of 
ethical  need.  With  Plato  perception  ap- 
plies only  to  the  corporeal  world  and  can 
give  opinions  only.  Thought,  on  the 
other  hand,  leads  us  to  a  higher  and 
ultimate  truth  and  knowledge  of  the  True 
Being. 

Democritus  kept  to  the  way  of  material- 
ism. "Pure  Form,"  with  Plato,  had  been  a 
general  term  corresponding  to  logical  spe- 
cies, but  Democritus  meant  by  this  term 

52 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

atom  forms.  To  the  motion  of  atoms  he 
refers  perception  and  all  mental  activities 
whatsoever.  The  mind,  or  soul,  or  what- 
ever may  be  named  as  the  perceiving  sub- 
ject, consists  of  atoms  which  differ  from 
other  atoms  only  in  fineness,  as  the  atoms 
of  fire  were  said  to  be  finer  than  those  of 
other  substances.  In  a  perceiving  being  the 
fire  atoms  were  assumed  to  exist  in  about 
the  proportion  of  one  in  three.  By  this 
simple  and  easy  speculation  was  laid  the 
basis  of  later  materialism  with  its  knowing 
and  purposive  monads,  corpuscular  attrac- 
tions and  repulsions,  atomic  loves  and  hates, 
vital  sparks  and  elans  vitaux,  which  at  least 
to  the  advocates  of  the  system  are  suffi- 
cient to  account  for  the  world  and  all  that 
dwell  therein.  "Thus  the  prejudice  in  favor 
of  what  may  be  perceived  or  imaged  (a?i- 
schaulich),  as  if  spatial  form  and  motion 
were  something  simpler,  more  comprehen- 
sible in  themselves,  and  less  of  a  problem 
than  qualitative  character  and  alteration,  is 
made  the  principle  for  the  theoretical  ex- 
planation of  the  world. "^ 

^  Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  111. 

53 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

Perpetuation  of  the  Doctrine  Through 
Epicurean  and  Stoic 

The  theories  of  Democritus  passed  on 
through  the  Epicureans  in  so  far  as  they 
involved  atomism  and  mechanism.  But 
Epicurus  was  weak  in  his  conception  of  the 
necessary  causation  of  mechanical  forces. 
He  differed  from  Democritus  in  denying 
altogether  the  existence  of  purpose  in  mat- 
ter. He  held  that  the  causeless  deviation  of 
atoms  was  suflScient  to  explain  the  worlds. 
Such  a  statement  of  the  doctrine  would  have 
been  of  little  use  to  the  scientific  age  that 
was  coming,  but  fortunately  the  Stoics  pre- 
served that  which  the  Epicureans  lacked  of 
Democritus'  doctrine.  Through  their  pan- 
theistic conception  of  the  Deity  as  the 
"vital  principle"  they  arrived  at  belief  in 
an  absolute  causal  necessity.  Thus  they 
continued  that  which  the  Epicureans  had 
lost  in  the  shuffle — the  idea  of  a  universal 
reign  of  law.^ 

When  at  last  the  long  reign  of  Neoplaton- 
ism  and  scholasticism  was  ended  by  the 
shock  of  discovery  and  renaissance,  it  was 

2  Sc.  Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  183. 

54 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

the  complementary  ideas  of  mechanical  cau- 
sation and  reign  of  law  that  proved  so 
potent  to  the  new  generation  of  scientiiSc 
investigators. 

Revival  and  Development  of  the 
Doctrine  in  Modern  Science 

The  tool  had  been  preserved,  and  was 
ready  when  the  syllogistic  form  of  reason- 
ing introduced  by  Aristotle  had  spent  its 
force  and  had  shown  its  inadequacy  to 
deal  singlehanded  with  practical  problems. 
The  world  had  grown  tired  of  the  weary 
round  of  dialectic.  The  reaction  was  for 
that  reason  all  the  more  intense.  But  the 
tool  was  yet  to  be  perfected. 

Bruno  led  the  way  by  his  conception  of 
the  monad,  which  in  truly  Hylozoistic 
fashion  he  endowed  with  potentiality.  He 
affirmed  the  homogeneity  of  the  universe, 
and  declared  that  all  qualitative  determina- 
tions must  be  traced  to  quantitative  changes. 

Bacon,  casting  off  the  rigors  of  scholastic 
method,  declared  that  induction  from  par- 
ticular experiences  is  the  only  true  method 
of  science. 

55 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

Galileo  contributed  an  insistence  upon 
the  application  of  the  mathematical  prin- 
ciple to  scientific  investigation,  with  this 
difference:  instead  of  applying  it  to  Being 
he  appHed  it  to  Becoming,  or  change.  Thus 
with  his  brilliant  contemporaries  he  laid  the 
foundations  for  modern  astronomy. 

Descartes  made  a  contribution  of  greatest 
importance  in  that  while  he  insisted  on  the 
certainty  afforded  by  induction,  he  also  de- 
manded that  the  principle  thus  attained 
should  by  the  method  of  composition  afford 
explanation  to  the  whole  round  of  ex- 
perience. 

The  Difficulty  of  Naturalistic 
Explanation 

Why,  then,  should  we  remain  unsatisfied 
with  a  principle  which  in  the  material  world 
has  so  proved  its  practical  worth  .^  Why 
should  Greek  atomism,  lying  at  the  basis  of 
the  modern  discovery  of  nature,  receive  the 
unworthy  title  of  "phantom"?  For  this 
reason:  while  it  has  furnished  an  invaluable 
method  of  procedure  in  investigation,  its 
leading  postulates  are  yet  unproved.    Many 

56 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

of  them  remain  as  much  in  the  rcahn  of  the 
imagination  as  tliey  did  in  the  crude  theories 
of  the  sixth  century  before  Christ.  The 
weakness  of  the  supporters  of  naturahsm 
has  in  the  main  been  their  inabihty  to 
recognize  the  possible  truth  and  vahie  of 
the  theory  for  physics,  without  reviving  the 
ghost  of  ancient  speculation  and  insisting 
that  it  has  equal  force  for  metaphysics. 

Whatever  the  attempt  of  materialism  to 
explain  life  and  mind,  whether  through  the 
Hylozoistic  endowment  of  atoms  with  sense 
or  the  hiding  of  the  fact  of  self-directing 
personality  under  the  verbiage  of  "states  of 
consciousness,"  it  can  do  no  more  than  ex- 
plain half  the  world.  For  the  thinking 
mind,  burdened  with  the  explanation  of  its 
own  consciousness  and  volition,  seeking  to 
know  its  rightful  place  in  the  universe  and 
to  understand  itself,  the  half  world  ex- 
plained by  naturalism  is  the  half  that  is 
least  important.  It  needs  ever  to  be  kept 
in  mind  that  knowledge  of  the  laws  of 
change,  of  precedence  and  sequence,  while 
giving  us  sure  ground  on  which  to  build  our 
human  expectations,  tells  us  nothing  of  the 
57 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

essence  of  that  which  acts.  As  a  method  of 
science  atomism  is  to  be  judged  solely  by 
its  value  as  a  guide  upon  the  road,  not  to 
metaphysical  explanation,  but  to  the  human 
mastery  of  physical  forces.  It  is  good  so  long 
as  it  proves  valuable,  and  only  to  that  extent. 
Perhaps  the  most  humorous  thing  in  the 
history  of  philosophy — if  humor  can  ever 
be  said  to  invade  so  dreary  a  realm — is  the 
attempt  of  naturalism  to  account  for 
thought  and  will,  decrying  the  vagueness 
and  abstraction  of  the  idealist,  and  at  the 
same  moment  introducing  into  its  concep- 
tion of  the  atom  the  illusory,  magical,  and 
abstract  powers  which  it  condemns  in  the 
God  of  its  opponents.  One  inevitably  re- 
verts to  the  picture  of  Faust  traveling  the 
Pharsalian  fields  in  the  Walpurgis  Night, 
with  Homonculus  speaking  to  him  out  of  a 
bottle.  The  materialist  may  prefer  a  God 
whose  magic  powers  can  all  be  confined  in 
a  test  tube,  but  there  will  always  remain 
some  who  cannot  discover  folly  in  believing 
in  a  God  both  immanent  and  transcendent, 
after  the  manner  of  Sidney  Lanier,  '*My 
God  is  great,  my  God  is  strong." 

58 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  EVADED  PROBLEMS  OF 
SPENCER'S  PIHLOSOPHY 

It  would  seem  unnecessary  to  take  much 
space  for  examination  of  the  now  generally 
discredited  system  of  Herbert  Spencer.  Be- 
cause he  was  the  spokesman  for  the  natural- 
istic school;  because  he  long  held  sway  over 
the  popular  mind  as  the  representative  of 
scientific  thinking;  and  because  it  was 
Bowne  who  early  called  attention  to  the 
metaphysical  inconsistencies  of  his  position, 
we  enter  here  upon  a  brief  discussion  of  his 
work. 

The  naturalistic  school  itself  now  sees  the 
untenability  of  Spencer's  favorite  positions. 
By  no  one  of  any  school  has  he  been  more 
sharply  arraigned  than  by  Mr.  Bergson. 
But  this  arraignment  comes  forty  years 
after  the  clean-cut  criticisms  of  the  young 
Bowne.  Bowne's  criticisms  were  offered  at 
59 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

a  time  when  the  empirical  philosophy  was 
both  in  physics  and  metaphysics  in  the 
ascendant.  It  was  then  an  unpopular  thing 
to  venture  criticism.  Forgiveness  was  never 
accorded  him  in  the  minds  of  some  for  his 
sacrilegious  daring  in  the  presence  of  this 
idol  of  their  thought.  To  take  an  attitude 
of  criticism  seemed  at  the  time  opposed  to 
all  that  judgment  and  right  sense  science 
and  reality  dictated.  The  possession  of 
clearer  ideas  by  the  philosophical  world 
to-day  upon  the  proper  limits  of  scientific 
investigation  is  doubtless  in  some  measure 
due  to  the  pitiless  criticism  and  construc- 
tive thought  of  Bowne. 

The  Much-Known  Unknowable 

One  secret  of  Spencer's  popularity  lay  in 
his  apparent  reconciliation  of  science  and 
religion  in  a  time  of  intense  bitterness.  He 
was  essentially  monistic,  and  yet,  while 
yielding  the  claims  of  empirical  science, 
seemed  to  leave  place  for  a  Divine  Creative 
Power.  It  is  true  that  he  left  to  the  reli- 
gious a  poor  sort  of  God,  but  at  the  mo- 
ment they  were  glad  to  be  left  anything. 

60 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

Spencer  repudiated  with  warmth  the  charge 
of  being  a  inateriahst  and  strove  to  keep 
his  thought  free  from  it.  Nevertheless,  the 
logic  of  his  doctrine  of  mind  inevitably 
landed  him  there,  though  unwilling  and 
protesting. 

The  loophole  by  which  he  hoped  to  admit 
the  Divine  Being,  and  so  save  the  cause  of 
religion,  is  the  very  one  through  which  the 
Purposive  Intelligence  is  compelled  to  make 
his  escape  from  the  system.  To  admit  God 
at  all  was  to  make  him  so  vaguely  indefinite 
as  not  to  be  able  to  interfere  with  the 
natural  world.  Relieved  of  this  responsi- 
bility, there  was  nothing  left  that  was  of 
any  consequence  to  our  thought  of  the 
Divine. 

Spencer  declared  for  the  phenomena  of 
experience  as  the  only  source  of  knowledge. 
When  we  go  back  of  these  we  hit  at  once 
upon  the  absolute,  are  lost  in  an  infinite 
regress,  and  are  told  that  the  absolute  can 
never  be  a  cause.  Concerning  this  absolute 
we  can  make  no  affirmation,  and,  therefore, 
he  applies  to  it  the  term  "Unknowable." 
Thus  he  seems  at  first  to  be  determined  to 

61 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

confine  himself  to  the  actions  and  interac- 
tions of  the  phenomenal  world,  and  science 
and  religion  seem  placed  on  an  equal  foot- 
ing regarding  the  Unknowable.  As  soon, 
however,  as  religion  has  been  consigned  to 
the  region  of  pure  mystery  we  discover  a 
strange  and  unaccountable  activity  in  the 
Unknowable.  We  were  told  to  reject  reli- 
gious assumptions  regarding  the  Unknow- 
able because  they  involved  an  infinitude  of 
time,  which  was  unthinkable.  Once  we  are 
well  freed  from  the  religious  realm,  how- 
ever, we  are  no  longer  to  be  constrained  by 
such  considerations.  We  begin  to  be  able 
to  affirm  many  things  of  the  Unknowable. 
In  the  words  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  which 
Bowne  was  fond  of  quoting,  we  begin  to 
possess  "a  prodigious  amount  of  knowledge 
concerning  the  Unknowable."  We  find  that 
it  is  omnipresent  in  time  and  space;  that  it 
is  related  to  the  system  of  experience; 
''Coexistences  and  sequences  in  experience 
point  to  coexistences  and  sequences  in  the 
fundamental  reality."  We  learn  that  the 
Unknowable  is  subject  to  time  and  change; 
that  it  is  one,  eternal,  power,  reality,  the 

62 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

cause  of  phenomena,  persistent,  and  inde- 
structible, "The  infinite  and  eternal  energy 
on  which  all  things  depend  and  from  which 
all  things  forever  proceed."  Though  we 
have  not  been  allowed  to  affirm  anything 
of  the  Unknowable  for  religious  faith,  yet 
such  afiirmation  becomes  the  mainstay  of 
the  system  of  physics.  In  the  religious 
realm  we  were  ordered  to  reject  all  con- 
clusions requiring  an  infinitude  of  time,  but 
in  the  physical  realm  we  are  commanded  to 
invoke  such  an  infinitude  in  order  to  ac- 
count for  the  system.  We  are  to  pass  to 
this  by  aflSrming  an  indestructibility  of 
matter,  and  an  ever-persistent  force,  which, 
indeed,  phenomena  will  not  enable  us  to 
prove,  but  which  we  must  imagine. 

It  is  true  that  Spencer  tries  to  save  the 
absolute,  after  having  banished  it  from  his 
kingdom,  by  saying  that  we  have  an  in- 
definite consciousness  of  it.  Examination 
shows  that  an  indefinite  consciousness  is 
worth  nothing  for  any  practical  purpose,  is 
nothing  more  than  a  form  of  words.  We 
feel  again  as  Wordsworth  expressed  him- 
self: 

63 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

I'd  rather  be 
A  pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn; 
So  might  I,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lee. 
Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn. 

The  Little-Known  Reality 

A  similar  negativing  indefiniteness  at- 
tends Spencer's  account  of  reality.  We 
have  seen  how  unsafe  and  improper  he 
considers  it  to  affirm  anything  like  per- 
sonahty  or  purpose  of  the  Unknowable. 
Inasmuch  as  the  fundamental  reahty  bulks 
back  on  the  Unknowable,  we  can  affirm 
nothing  except  certain  coexistences  and  se- 
quences which  are  witnessed  in  phenomena. 
All  knowledge  is  thus  made  relative  to  the 
individual  who  perceives  in  any  given  case. 
There  is,  indeed,  no  power  assigned  by 
which  the  individual  can  recognize  simi- 
larity in  phenomena,  or  reason  from  indi- 
vidual experiences  to  general  laws.  Memory 
is  unaccounted  for  because  no  personality 
is  provided  to  relate  "faint  states  of  con- 
sciousness." Dependent,  as  we  are,  upon 
an  Unknowable  of  which  we  can  affirm 
nothing,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  we  can  be 

64 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

certain  at  all  that  there  is  a  world  of  things 
corresponding  to  our  perceptions. 

At  this  point  he  meets,  according  to 
Bowne,  with  a  double  problem.  He  is 
forced  to  rescue  science  from  the  skeptical 
conclusions  of  his  know-nothing  argument. 
At  the  same  time  he  is  compelled  to  state  a 
doctrine  of  phenomena  and  of  knowledge 
which  will  provide  a  foundation  for  science 
and  save  his  system  from  materialism  and 
atheism.  To  escape  agnosticism  he  calls 
back  the  cashiered  and  discredited  notions 
of  matter,  force,  motion,  time,  and  space, 
treating  them  as  if  there  had  never  been 
any  doubt  of  their  standing  and  making 
them  the  foundation  on  which  to  build. 

The  other  half  of  the  problem  he  meets 
by  asserting  the  relative  nature  of  reality, 
defining  it  as  "persistence  in  consciousness." 
Reality  is,  then,  the  effect  produced  in  us 
by  the  fundamental  reality,  or  the  Un- 
knowable. In  this  case  Bowne  raises  a 
question.  Would  the  Unknowable  be  able 
to  do  anything  in  our  absence?  If  so,  then 
these  relative  realities  are  something  more 
than   effects   in   us,   and   the   definition   is 

65 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

inadequate.  If  the  relative  realities  do  not 
exist  in  our  absence,  then  reality  is  a  mere 
subjectivity,  as  illusive  as  a  dream. 

Spencer  makes  his  final  appeal  to  the 
claims  of  the  persistence  of  force  and  the 
indestructibility  of  matter.  By  persistence 
of  force  he  declares  himself  to  mean  "the 
persistence  of  some  cause  that  transcends 
our  knowledge  and  conception."  Thus  we 
are  brought  back  as  a  last  resort  to  the 
much-known  Unknowable  about  which  we 
can  affirm  nothing.  The  assumed  law  of 
the  indestructibility  of  matter  would  seem 
likewise  insufficient  as  a  basis  for  a  doc- 
trine of  phenomena.  It  may  be  sufficiently 
accurate  as  a  working  basis  in  the  physical 
realm,  but  it  cannot  be  accurately  demon- 
strated even  there.  In  the  case  of  the 
wedge  or  the  lever  we  determine  the  exact 
amount  of  power,  resistance,  friction,  and 
heat,  and  on  paper  write  an  equation  which 
is  sufficiently  correct  for  practical  purposes. 
But,  speaking  with  the  exactitude  required 
by  a  law  of  indestructibility,  there  are  losses 
in  the  process  that  we  cannot  compute  nor 
include.    Our  equation  is  an  approximation 

6G 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

of  the  fact.  We  speak  of  the  transmutation 
of  friction,  weight  of  falHng  water,  or  energy 
of  steam  into  electrical  power,  light,  or 
heat,  and  can  come  sufficiently  near  for 
practical  purposes,  but  along  the  way  much 
has  to  go  unaccounted  for.  We  cannot 
turn  the  processes  backward  and  get  the 
first  terms  of  our  equation.  In  other  words, 
science  can  secure  a  practical  working  basis 
after  the  law  of  indestructibility.  It  cannot 
do  more. 

In  the  end  we  find  that  Spencer  cannot 
meet  his  problem  without  assuming  for  his 
persistence  of  force  and  indestructibility  of 
matter  that  very  infinitude  of  time  against 
which  he  has  warned  us  in  the  religious 
realm.  He  cannot  prove  these  laws  in  any 
given  case,  but  he  can  imagine  that  they 
might  be  true  if  they  were  given  an  infinite 
time  in  which  to  work. 

The  Theory  of  Evolution 

Spencer's  theory  of  evolution,  though  not 
originating  with  him,  and  advanced  first  in 
the  early  Greek  philosophy,  was  the  part 
of  his  system  which  gave  him  the  widest 

67 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

reading  and  popularity.  In  his  statement 
of  the  theory  we  find  much  philosophical 
unsoundness. 

The  main  support  of  his  definition  of 
evolution  lies  in  his  dependence  upon  the 
fallacy  of  the  universal.  This  is  the  fallacy 
which  vitiates  general  statements  and  makes 
for  half-truths.  It  is  a  part  of  the  busy- 
body's statement,  "Every  one  is  saying,'* 
when  the  exact  truth  is  that  the  busybody 
is  saying.  If  we  can  multiply  atoms  suffi- 
ciently to  make  impossible  the  tracing  of 
any  individual  atom,  and  can  multiply  to 
an  indefinite  length  the  time  in  which  they 
have  to  work,  we  can  observe  without 
wonder  any  imagined  result.  The  point  at 
issue  is  further  lost  in  the  words  with  which 
Spencer  covers  up  the  gap  from  the  inor- 
ganic to  the  organic,  from  organic  to 
sentient,  from  sentient  to  reasoning  being. 
This  is  done  by  employing  a  word  in 
slightly  different  senses,  and  so  the  gulf  is 
bridged,  linguistically  speaking.  But  never 
yet  hath  eye  seen  nor  ear  heard  how  or 
when  one  single  atom  was  led  across  the 
gulf  to  become  a  living  soul. 

68 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

Moreover,  if  we  are  compelled  to  assume 
with  Spencer  the  logical  equivalence  of 
cause  and  effect,  the  definition  has  no 
meaning.  If  I  must  say  of  any  effect  that 
all  of  its  elements  were  already  contained 
in  its  cause,  the  passing  from  one  to  the 
other  is  no  progress.  It  cannot  explain  the 
elements  of  novelty  which  enter  in.  It 
would  certainly  be  inadequate  to  explain 
the  emergence  of  the  present  world  from 
the  original  dance  of  atoms.  Mr.  Bergson 
has  directed  his  sharpest  shafts  at  this  con- 
ception of  evolution.  He  compares  it  to 
putting  together  a  puzzle  picture,  all  the 
parts  of  which  have  been  previously  fitted 
and  prepared,  and  then  with  childish  im- 
agination assuming  that  a  creative  progress 
has  been  made. 

The  Definition  of  Life  and  Mind 

It  is  Spencer's  doctrine  of  mind  that  ex- 
poses the  materialistic  trend  of  his  phil- 
osophy. Judged  from  his  doctrine  of  mat- 
ter, Spencer  rightly  claimed  not  to  be  a 
materialist.  Judged  from  his  doctrine  of 
mind,  materialism  was  his  inevitable  goal. 

69 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

According  to  the  statement  of  the  evolu- 
tion formula,  life  is  to  be  defined  in  terms 
of  matter  and  motion.  These  in  turn  are 
but  the  symbols  of  the  Unknowable.  Here 
Bowne  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
atoms  may  be  chemically  regrouped,  and 
can  also  be  summoned  forth  in  sufficient 
numbers  to  cause  considerable  masses. 
Bowne  asks,  however,  what  chemical  dis- 
tribution can  be  made  which  will  be  more 
than  a  distribution  or  combination  of 
chemicals.  So  long  as  it  is  a  chemical  com- 
bination it  can  be  resolved  into  its  con- 
stituent elements.  Borrowing  a  word  from 
the  biological  realm  to  cover  the  dis- 
crepancy between  chemical  atom  and  living 
protoplasm  is  not  an  actual  but  a  verbal 
process.  We  are  not  told  how  matter  or 
motion  becomes  something  essentially  dif- 
ferent— that  is,  a  living  organism. 

In  like  manner,  in  his  theory  of  mind 
Spencer  is  satisfied  with  bridging  verbally 
the  gap  between  an  affection  of  the  nerves 
and  a  consciousness  of  the  external  world. 
He  does  this  by  asserting  a  double  face  to 
all  nervous  action.    But  it  is  useless  to  talk 

70 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

of  a  double-faced  character  for  nervous  ac- 
tion. We  would  still  be  bound  to  explain 
how  an  affection  of  the  auditory  nerve  can 
be  more  than  pleasurable  or  painful,  soft 
or  harsh,  faint  or  vivid.  Whence  comes 
the  mental  content.^  There  must  be  some- 
thing more  than  the  affection  of  a  nerve, 
or  I  should  not  recognize  the  voice  I  hear 
as  my  mother's,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
attendant  thought  and  memory  which  stir 
into  consciousness  all  the  springs  of  loyalty 
and  affection.  How  shall  I  judge  whether 
a  sharp  affection  of  my  nerves  is  the 
"Soldier's  Chorus"  or  a  toothache.^  The 
"face"  of  nervous  action  by  which  I  come 
to  knowledge  tells  me  nothing  about  the 
other  "face"  at  all,  but  speaks  directly  of 
that  outside  world  which  impinges  upon 
consciousness.  If  I  say  the  effects  pro- 
duced in  me  are  only  the  attendants  upon 
certain  nervous  affections,  I  have  yet  to 
show  how  I  can  consider  my  consciousness 
a  true  picture  of  what  I  seem  to  see.  I 
must  further  explain  how  in  this  system  of 
fleeting  experiences,  the  factors  of  ex- 
perience are  by  good  fortune  related  each 

71 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

to  each,  or  how  the  memory  of  yesterday 
can  persist  with  any  real  meaning  for 
to-day. 

We  are  shut  up  to  a  world  of  nervous 
action.  The  structure  that  we  build  thereon 
is  without  common  validity  or  verification. 
With  or  against  our  wills,  if  we  cling  to 
Spencer's  system,  we  come  to  haven  in  a 
universe  purely  materialistic,  from  which 
even  the  Unknowable  is  powerless  to  save 
us. 


72 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


CHAPTER  V 

BOWNE  AS  AN  ANTAGONIST  OF 
NATURALISM 

All  Philosophical  Values  Hinge  on 
THE  Definition  of  Reality 

The  real  import  of  any  system  of  thought 
eventually  rests  with  its  doctrine  of  reality. 
In  regard  to  the  nature  of  reality  we  have 
noted  the  two  great  antagonistic  streams  of 
thought.  Under  the  first  category  are  in- 
cluded those  thinkers  who  assume  matter 
as  the  basal  reality.  It  makes  little  dif- 
ference whether  they  proceed  uj^on  the 
theory  of  magical  and  metaphysical  atoms 
endowed  with  energy,  motion,  and  force, 
or  whether  they  conceal  the  metaphysical 
drift  of  their  arguments  by  the  assumption 
of  vital  impulses,  reactions,  affinities,  selec- 
tion, or  what  not.  In  the  end  the  sufficiency 
of  all  such  theories  will  be  found  to  lie  in  the 
ignoring  of  a  part  of  the  problem.  Disaster 
is   avoided   only   by   refusal   to   carry   the 

73 


PERSON ALISM  AND  THE 

problem  to  its  logical  conclusion.  Such  is 
the  end  of  all  materialism. 

Plato  attempted  to  meet  the  tide  of  ma- 
terialistic thought  by  raising  the  barrier  of 
ideal  knowledge.  To  him  the  universal  was 
the  true  reality.  The  universally  true  was 
forever  beyond  the  cavil  or  denial  of  indi- 
viduals. He  thus  erected  in  thought  an 
idealism  that  through  Neoplatonism  pro- 
foundly influenced  Christian  theology  for 
centuries. 

Aristotle,  his  pupil,  noted  the  impassable 
gulf  in  Plato's  world  between  the  ideal  and 
the  actual  and  attempted  to  bridge  it.  He 
declared  that  reality  could  not  exist  as  a 
general  term,  but  must  be  found  in  con- 
crete and  particular  instances.  As  Aristotle 
labored  to  bring  together  the  universal  and 
the  particular,  and  to  let  the  Platonic 
idealism  down  to  earth,  so  Bowne  aimed  to 
join  the  sundered  sides  of  philosophic 
thought.  Knowing  the  importance  of  the 
doctrine  of  reality  to  the  future  implica- 
tions of  his  system,  he  stated  his  definition 
with  unusual  care.  Reality  with  Bowne  was 
active  and  causal,  that  which  can  act  or  be 

74 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

acted  upon.  He  thus  made  possible  the 
assumption  of  the  reahty  of  thought  with- 
out falhng  prey  to  the  phenomenahsm  of 
the  absokite  ideahst. 

The  naturaHst,  by  assuming  an  atomic 
causation  for  all  mental  perception,  invests 
each  idea,  right  or  wrong,  with  fundamental 
validity.  He  leaves  no  room,  either,  for  the 
substantiation  of  mental  possessions  that 
come  by  the  way  of  reflection.  He  is  not 
only  faced  by  the  problem  of  error;  he  is  at 
loss  to  account  for  all  reflective  knowledge. 

From  the  opposite  direction,  the  absolute 
idealist  encounters  difficulty  with  the  prob- 
lem of  evil.  If  thought  in  man  is  simply  a 
reflection  of  God's  thought,  the  burden  of 
all  evil  and  malicious  thinking,  error,  su- 
perstition, and  baseless  fears  is  laid  upon 
the  Infinite  Mind. 

Now  if,  as  with  Bowne,  the  essence  of 
reality  is  simply  causal  activity,  no  such 
difliculties  arise.  The  world  of  things  de- 
pends upon  the  causal  activity  of  a  Divine 
Personality.  The  mutual  relations  and  in- 
teractions of  the  world  spring  from  the 
unity  of  the  Supreme  Will.  The  mind  of 
75 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

man  grasps  a  true  world  because  both 
thinker  and  thing  are  included  in  the  one 
creative  harmony.  We  have  an  inkling  of 
how  this  may  be  in  the  causal  efficiency  of 
the  human  personality,  which  is  able  to 
penetrate  matter  and  to  make  matter  con- 
form to  it.  This  may,  indeed,  be  a  great 
mystery  to  the  materialist,  but  it  is  a 
truth  which  no  man  can  doubt  without  the 
overthrow  of  confidence  in  the  reality  of 
his  own  experience. 

It  might  seem  that  while  Bowne  has  by 
this  process  escaped  the  problem  of  error, 
he  has  not  been  so  fortunate  with  the 
problem  of  evil.  And  yet  the  problem  of 
evil,  that  crux  of  theism,  as  the  problem  of 
error  is  the  nightmare  of  materialism, 
ceases  to  maintain  so  great  a  tyranny.  Dr. 
Bowne  would  have  been  far  from  claiming 
for  his  system  the  solution  of  the  problem. 
But  under  the  order  of  Personalism  evil  is 
no  longer  the  necessary  expression  of  the 
fundamental  reality,  nor  is  it  loaded  upon 
the  Divine  Will.  It  is,  rather,  an  attendant 
upon  the  granting  of  freedom  to  responsible 
human  personalities,  it  being  more  dear  to 

76 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

the  Divine  to  secure  moral  character  than 
to  create  an  otherwise  perfect  but  morally 
irresponsible  world.  It  is  at  least  thinkable 
that  to  a  God  of  moral  capacity  an  unmoral 
world  would  be  imperfect.  If  at  the  end 
of  long  disciplines  he  can  bring  mankind 
up  to  a  moral  perfection  that  is  true  because 
voluntary,  might  that  not  be  the  perfect 
world  that  should  satisfy  the  divine 
thought?  This  mingling  of  human  and 
divine  personality  and  purpose  has  been 
thus  beautifully  expressed  by  Alfred  Noyes 
in  his  poem  "Creation": 

When  he  is  older  he  shall  be 

My  friend  and  walk  here  at  My  side 
Or — when  he  wills — grow  young  with  Me, 

And,  to  that  happy  world  where  once  We  died. 
Descending  through  the  calm,  blue  weather. 

Buy  life  once  more  with  our  immortal  breath. 
And  wander  through  the  little  fields  together. 

And  taste  of  Love  and  Death. 

Is  God  Immanent  Mover  or  Prime 
Mover? 

Naturalism  can  secure  nothing  more  than 
a  phenomenal  world.  If  the  stirring  of 
atoms  gives  us  perception,  and  chemical  or 

77 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

molecular  change  in  the  cells  of  the  brain 
is  alone  responsible  for  ideas,  we  are  still 
at  loss  to  explain  how  molecular  changes 
can  give  us  thought  and  a  knowledge  of 
the  world  of  relations.  What  we  really 
have  is  an  affection  of  the  nerves.  When 
we  attempt  to  reason  from  these  nervous 
affections  to  a  world  of  relations  we  have  no 
reason  to  assume  that  we  have  more  than 
phenomena.  We  have  no  means  of  proving 
our  world  to  be  a  real  one.  The  reason  is  that 
moving  from  the  materialistic  standpoint  we 
have  not  assumed  a  ground  sufficiently  in- 
clusive to  take  in  the  thinker  and  the  thing. 
We  are  at  an  equal  loss  on  the  naturalis- 
tic plane  to  trace  effects  to  a  first  cause. 
We  cannot  follow  the  series  far  until  we 
discover  that  we  are  involved  in  an  infinite 
regress.  Each  effect  demands  a  preceding 
cause.  The  earliest  cause  becomes  more 
troublesome  for  explanation  than  the  latest. 
In  despair  we  may  be  led  to  affirm  with 
Spencer  that  the  first  cause  is  the  Unknow- 
able. Then  we  are  compelled  to  face  the 
question  of  how  the  knowable  can  spring 
from  the  unknowable.    Aristotle  attempted 

78 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

to  solve  this  deadlock  by  positing  a  Divine 
Will  as  the  Prime  Mover. ^  Such  a  world 
would  find  its  unity  in  a  primal  impulse, 
but  would  fall  victim  to  a  doctrine  of 
necessity  only  less  rigid  than  that  of 
naturalism.  Bowne  meets  this  problem  by 
assuming  that  the  fundamental  causal  ac- 
tivity is  not  a  Prime  Mover,  but  an  Imma- 
nent Mover  continually  manifesting  himself 
in  the  on-going  of  the  world.  Such  a  con- 
ception does  not  conflict  with  the  laws  of 
natural  science,  for  Bowne  draws  a  careful 
distinction  between  phenomenal  and  effi- 
cient causality.  Natural  science  is  built 
upon  the  laws  of  sequence  in  phenomena. 
We  can  aflSrm  the  order  in  which  events  will 
occur  without  making  any  metaphysical  as- 
sumptions at  all.  The  efficient  cause  of  the 
action  and  interaction  of  the  natural  order 
is  the  Divine  Personality  establishing  his 
own  laws  of  procedure. 

The  Personality  of  the  World-Ground 

At  this  point  we  find  Bowne  going  beyond 
the  thought  of  Aristotle  to  affirm  personal- 

'  Aristotle,  Metaphysics,  Book  xi,  chap.  vii. 

79 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

ity  in  the  Divine  Being.  This  thought 
would  have  been  »repugnant  to  Aristotle,  but 
his  failure  to  affirm  it  made  impossible  the 
maintenance  of  a  moral  order  and  of  per- 
sonal immortality.  This  fact  is  most  clearly 
brought  out  by  Eucken.  He  says:  "Aris- 
totle affirms  the  existence  of  a  transcendent 
Deity  as  the  source  of  reason,  and  as  the 
origin  of  motion,  which  from  eternity  to 
eternity  pervades  the  universe.  But  he 
denies  to  this  Deity  any  activity  within  the 
world;  concern  with  external  things,  not  to 
say  petty  human  affairs,  would  destroy  the 
completeness  of  the  Deity's  life.  So  God, 
or  pure  intelligence,  himself  unmoved, 
moves  the  world  by  his  mere  being;  any 
further  development  of  things  arises  from 
their  own  nature.  Here,  accordingly,  there 
is  no  moral  order  of  the  world,  and  no 
Providence.  Likewise  there  can  be  no  hope 
of  a  personal  immortality.' 

In  contrast  with  Aristotle,  Bowne  de- 
clares that  "Causal  explanation  must  be  in 
terms  of  personality  or  it  must  vanish 
altogether."    This  view  is  strictly  in  accord 

•  The  Problem  of  Human  Life,  p.  47. 

80 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

with  all  that  we  know  of  causation.  Prece- 
dences and  sequences  in  phenomena  could 
give  to  individual  atoms  no  knowledge  of 
the  meaning  of  the  processes  of  which  they 
are  a  part.  Phenomenal  causes  would  be 
confined  to  the  effects  which  they  them- 
selves produced,  and  in  any  case  we  would 
be  forced  to  an  infinite  regress.  In  human 
personality  alone  we  have  introduced  into 
experience  of  causation  that  which  is  an 
uncaused  cause  of  phenomena.  The  human 
personality,  being  able  to  relate  a  succession 
of  causes  and  effects  to  itself,  and  standing 
outside  the  mechanical  circle,  becomes  meas- 
urably an  efficient  cause.  But  the  human 
personality  in  order  to  preserve  the  in- 
tegrity of  its  own  thought  bulks  back  on  an 
eternal  thinking  Personality  through  which 
it  finds  its  synthesis  with  the  world  of 
things  and  persons.  Thus  the  human  per- 
sonality, introducing  an  unaccounted  factor 
into  the  realm  of  nature,  gives  a  hint  of  the 
place  of  the  Divine  Personality  in  this 
order.  If  this  uncaused  and  purposive  per- 
sonal element  be  left  out,  we  can  have  no 
eflficient  causation  and  no  real  progress.  On 
81 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

the  Impersonal  plane  the  effect  must  be 
already  contained  in  the  cause,  and  there 
can  be  no  progress.  To  say  that  the  effect 
is  only  potentially  contained  in  the  cause 
is  to  introduce  the  new  factor  surreptitiously 
under  the  cover  of  a  word.  Any  World- 
Ground  capable  of  real  causation,  not  itself 
involved  in  the  atomic  flux,  must  be  per- 
sonal as  well  as  intelligent. 

Is  Freedom  Possible  in  the  Natural 
World? 

As  has  already  been  pointed  out,  any 
system  of  mechanical  explanation  falls  in- 
evitably into  difficulty  with  the  problem  of 
evil,  as  well  as  with  the  problem  of  error. 
If  all  thinking  and  action  is  caused  by 
atomic  motion,  then  we  are  bound  to  a 
system  of  necessity,  and  moral  action  be- 
comes impossible.  The  criminal  in  his 
crirup  is  then  simply  fulfilling  the  necessary 
result  of  affections  of  his  nerves.  He  is 
much  to  be  pitied,  but  not  at  all  to  be 
blamed.  Every  sort  of  error  and  ex- 
travagance is  given  an  equal  footing  with 
truth  and  sanity.     Only  a  little  reflection 

82 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

serves  to  show  how  deeply  this  theory 
would  cut  into  every  demand  of  the  moral 
order. 

By  positing  all  causal  efficiency  as  arising 
from  personality,  place  is  left  for  the 
existence  of  error  and  evil  without  offending 
the  human  sense  of  moral  obligation  or 
erecting  error  into  the  plane  of  truth,  or  of 
burdening  the  Deity  with  responsibility  for 
evil.  It  is  impossible  to  explain  the  prob- 
lem of  evil  in  any  general  way  that  will  give 
satisfaction,  because  man  is  a  moral  being 
and  so  constituted  that  the  existence  of 
evil  is  forever  an  offense;  and  because, 
further,  the  problem  can  be  met  only  on 
the  arena  of  action  and  solved  only  in  the 
individual  life.  It  is  possible  to  hold  such 
a  view  as  not  to  offend  the  most  treasured 
instincts  of  the  heart.  This  Bowne  has 
done  by  reason  of  his  definition  of  reality 
and  by  the  assumption  of  personality  in 
the  World-Ground. 


83 


SECTION  II 
IDEALISM 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  KANTIAN  STARTING-POINT 

Has  the  Mind  a  Task  in  Experience? 

Kant's  great  contribution  to  the  world 
of  thought  was  his  discovery  that  the 
mind  has  a  task  in  experience.  He  affirmed 
truly  when  he  declared  that  his  work  would 
make  as  great  a  change  in  the  outlook  of 
philosophy  as  had  the  discoveries  of  Coper- 
nicus in  the  field  of  astronomy. 

Hitherto  the  mind  had  been  regarded  as 
the  passive  recipient  of  impressions,  a  tablet 
on  which  the  world  of  external  things  could 
write  itself.  Kant  showed  that  every  ex- 
perience was  due  to  the  constitutive  ac- 
tivity of  the  mind  itself,  as  well  as  to  the 
impressions  of  the  outside  world.  Time  and 
space  had  been  conceived  as  fundamental 
realities  which  could  exist  apart  from  all 
intelligence.  He  aimed  to  show  how  they 
were  but  the  forms  under  which  the  think- 
ing mind  relates  the  world  of  tilings  and 
events  to  itself  and  to  each  other.     This 

87 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

power  of  the  mind  to  bring  a  real  contribu- 
tion of  its  own  to  experience  will  be  ap- 
parent if  we  consider  how  the  world  of 
nature  yields  a  decidedly  richer  content  to 
the  biologist  than  to  the  man  ignorant  of 
her  processes.  She  speaks  to  the  trained 
mind  a  thousand  things  unnoticed  by  the 
untrained,  and  every  addition  to  the  mental 
capital  increases  the  synthesizing  power  of 
the  beholder. 

That  space  is  a  necessary  form  of  think- 
ing, an  intuition  rather  than  an  acquirement 
of  experience,  is  to  be  illustrated  in  many 
ways.  In  dreams,  though  there  is  no  actual 
space,  the  mind  works  under  the  space  form. 
In  traveling  distances  during  the  uncon- 
sciousness of  sleep,  and  even  for  places 
never  seen,  the  mind  proceeds  to  construct 
ideas  of  them  under  the  form  of  space. 

Time  is  likewise  a  law  of  intelligence 
rather  than  an  entity  in  itself.  As  space  is 
the  form  under  which  we  relate  a  world  of 
diversity  to  ourselves  and  each  other,  so 
time  is  the  form  under  which  we  relate  the 
world  of  experiences  to  the  abiding  self. 
Without  this  contribution  of  the  self  which 

88 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

survives  the  changes  there  could  be  no 
sense  of  time.  In  other  words,  it  is  because 
there  is  an  element  of  timelessness  in  the 
thinker  that  he  gets  the  idea  of  the  passage 
of  time.  Time  being  the  form  under  which 
intelligence  acts,  the  mind  by  its  own  con- 
stitutive activity  is  able  to  grasp  and  assign 
a  meaning  to  historic  periods  of  which  ex- 
perience could  tell  it  nothing. 

The  weakness  in  Kant's  position  lay  in 
the  fact  that  he  took  account  only  of  the 
subjective  side  of  this  activity  of  the  mind. 
It  is  well  enough  for  me  to  say  that  time 
and  space  are  only  the  forms  under  which 
I  think,  but  are  they  peculiar  to  me.^^  Do 
they  not  exist  apart  from  my  thinking.'' 
How  may  I  be  sure  that  the  time  and  space 
which  I  think  will  correspond  to  that  which 
others  think  .^  Kant's  failure  to  answer  these 
questions  vitiated  his  system.  It  becomes 
at  once  apparent  that  both  time  and  space 
must  possess  some  objective  validity  to  free 
them  from  the  disjunctive  caprice  of  the 
individual  and  make  possible  a  world  united 
in  space  and  time  relations.  This  Kant  did 
not  give  us. 

89 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

"We  cannot  impose  mental  forms  upon 
the  world  of  experience  unless  that  world 
itself  be  adapted  to  those  forms.  "^ 

It  is  interesting  to  note  how  Bowne, 
affirming  the  ideal  nature  of  space  and 
time,  yet  avoided  the  logical  impasse  to 
which  Kant  was  brought.  Bowne  was  too 
close  to  the  practical  in  his  thinking  not  to 
see  that  the  forms  of  time  and  space  must 
be  true  for  the  object  of  thought  as  well  as 
for  the  thinker.  To  him  space  and  time 
gain  a  validity  which  makes  them  universal 
for  all  intelligent  beings  through  a  Supreme 
Personal  Intelligence  who  creates  and  up- 
holds all.  The  world  of  things  and  of  intel- 
ligences correspond  each  to  each  because  all 
are  comprehended  in  a  Supreme  Intelligence 
from  which  they  acquire  their  meaning  and 
reality. 

Where  Can  We  Find  a  Permanent 
World? 

Of  course  Kant  was  not  blind  to  the 
necessity  of  asserting  somewhere  an  objec- 
tive validity.  He  clearly  saw  that  a  purely 
subjective   world   would   be   one  in   which 

*  Bowne,  Kant  and  Spencer,  p.  150. 

90 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

every  man  would  make  his  own  world  and 
no  two  worlds  would  correspond.  It  was 
necessary  to  point  out  some  principle  that 
would  possess  permanence  and  give  unity. 
This  permanent  principle  he  attempted  to 
introduce  under  what  he  called  the  analogies 
of  experience.^  In  this  portion  of  the 
Critique  Kant  becomes  perilously  involved 
in  his  search  for  the  permanent  in  phe- 
nomena. To  find  this  principle  of  per- 
manence he  all  but  affirms  an  independent 
and  back-lying  existence  for  things  in 
themselves.  To  the  mind  of  Bowne  the 
problem  of  permanence  could  never  be 
solved  in  this  crude  fashion.  "On  the  im- 
personal plane  there  is  no  possibility  of 
combining  permanence  with  change,  least 
of  all  by  a  mere  analysis  of  the  notion  of 
change.  On  that  plane  we  cannot  reserve 
anything  in  the  world  of  change  as  an 
abiding  element,  for  as  soon  as  it  becomes 
changeless  it  no  longer  explains  change,  and 
when  it  explains  change  it  passes  into  the 
changing,  and  changes  through  and  through. 
The  problem  here  can  be  solved  only  as  we 

2  Kant,  Critique,  tr.  by  Muller,  p.  144. 

91 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

carry  it  up  to  the  plane  of  personality,  and 
find  the  permanence  of  experience  in  the 
world  of  meaning  and  in  the  self-conscious 
intelligence  which  founds  and  administers 
the  world  of  meanings  under  the  forms  of 
change."^ 

What  Lies  Behind  the  Appearance  of 
Things? 

The  same  subjectivity  that  oppressed 
Kant  in  the  consideration  of  time  and  space 
troubled  him  likewise  in  his  attempt  to  find 
the  abiding  real.  This  difiiculty  was  in 
part  due  to  his  failure  to  discriminate  be- 
tween two  possible  definitions  of  the  term 
"subjective."  We  may  mean  by  the  term 
that  which  is  peculiar  to  the  individual 
alone,  or  we  may  mean  that  which  is  true 
for  intelligence  anywhere  and  has  no  exist- 
ence apart  from  it.  If  Kant  had  kept  this 
truth  in  mind  when  afiirming  the  subjec- 
tivity or  phenomenal  nature  of  reality,  all 
might  have  been  well.  But  failing  to  draw 
the  distinction,  he  made  the  system  of  ex- 
perience the  fiction  of  the  individual.  Kant's 

'  Bowne,  Kant  and  Spencer,  pp.  99,  100. 

92 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

only  escape  would  have  been  to  affirm  a 
back-lying  and  independent  Cause.  It  was 
only  thus  he  could  have  saved  his  system 
from  solipsism.  Phenomena  are  not  masks 
or  appearances  of  any  kind,  existing  only 
for  the  individual.  They  are  the  things 
that  exist  for  human  intelligences  every- 
where and  derive  their  common  meaning 
through  a  supreme  intelligence  by  which 
they  exist.  We  apprehend  them  through 
our  own  intelligence,  but  they  do  not  de- 
pend upon  our  intelligence  for  their  exist- 
ence; and  since  they  must  depend  upon 
intelligence  for  existence,  it  only  remains 
that  we  affirm  a  back-lying  intelligence  as 
their  cause  and  presupposition.* 

But  Kant  does  not  discover  the  high  road 
out  of  his  subjectivism.  For  him  things  in 
succession  imply  causal  relations,  and  as  the 
causal  relations  in  things  must  be  something 
independent  of  the  mind  of  the  onlooker, 
there  must  be  in  phenomena  a  residuant 
reality  beyond  that  which  the  mind  is  able 
to  perceive.  Thus  he  has  resort  to  a  doc- 
trine of  noumena.    The  end  of  this  way  is 

*  Bowne,  Kant  and  Spencer,  p.  124. 

93 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

an  impossible  dualism,  for  it  erects  a 
reality  which  is  not  only  independent  of 
individual  intelligence,  but  which  is  beyond 
all  intelligence,  being  of  a  different  and  un- 
knowable nature.  This  dualism  into  which 
Kant  unwittingly  falls  is  to  be  avoided  by 
distinguishing  between  causal  and  phenom- 
enal reality.  Phenomenal  reality  is  the 
noted  succession  of  appearances,  common  to 
all.  We  can  mark  the  preexistences  and 
successions  which  universally  hold  in  the 
world  of  experience,  and  we  can  formulate 
the  law  of  their  procedure  without  granting 
them  a  causal  efficiency  or  saying  anything 
about  their  metaphysical  ground.  Causal 
reality,  in  contrast,  deals  not  with  the  order 
of  succession,  but  with  the  ground  of  being 
itself. 

Can  We  "Prove"  the  World  of  Spirit? 

Kant's  purpose  was  to  prove  that  it  is 
impossible  from  the  common  data  of  ex- 
perience to  arrive  at  affirmations  respecting 
God  and  immortality.  He  did  this,  not  from 
hostility,  but  from  friendliness  to  faith. 

Naturalism  had  shown  the  inadequacy  of 
94 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

tlie  so-called  "proofs"  of  the  Divine  exist- 
ence. It  went  farther,  for,  assuming  its 
ability  to  account  for  everything  in  heaven 
and  in  earth,  it  also  asserted  the  non- 
existence of  everything  not  dreamt  of  in  its 
philosophy.  What  Kant  did  was  to  make 
room  for  faith  by  showing  that  religious 
convictions  lie  outside  the  province  of  the 
naturalistic  speculation.  It  could  neither  be 
proved  nor  disproved  on  the  basis  of  natural- 
ism. Kant  thus  claims  the  honor  of  over- 
throwing all  materialistic  and  atheistic 
teaching  by  showing  its  attempt  at  religious 
explanation  to  be  outside  its  possible  field. 
The  religious  world  of  to-day  has  come  to 
realize  that  there  can  be  no  "proofs"  for 
God  and  immortality,  in  the  sense  that  was 
so  much  sought  after  in  Kant's  day.  We 
realize  now  that  the  great  argument  for 
God  is  the  practical  interest.  We  affirm 
the  existence  of  God  because  he  is  a  neces- 
sity for  all  sane  thinking  and  his  existence 
is  demanded  by  the  moral  and  religious 
interests  of  life.  This  practical  argument 
possesses  much  more  force  for  the  present 
day  than  the  old  "proofs."  What  is  said 
95 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

for  the  doctrine  of  God  can  likewise  be  said 
for  immortality  and  all  the  fundamental  re- 
ligious truths.  They  stand  forever  because 
they  are  written  into  the  very  nature  of 
the  human  spirit. 

In  his  contention  Kant  was  true  to  the 
facts.  The  apprehension  of  God  is  an  act 
of  faith.  Spiritual  truths  are  gained  in  the 
exercise  of  faith  and  the  spiritual  powers. 
Bowne,  in  a  lecture  commenting  on  Kant's 
showing  of  the  impossibility  of  an  intel- 
lectual demonstration  of  the  existence  of 
God,  declared  that  the  apprehension  of  God 
could  be  reached  only  by  faith,  and  then 
added  this  significant  word:  "By  way  of 
mere  speculation  we  cannot  attain  to  dem- 
onstration in  any  field.  There  is  no  way 
of  stopping  where  Kant  stops." 

The  outcome  of  Kant's  "antinomies  of 
thought"  after  verbose  and  tedious  discus- 
sion is  closely  allied  to  this  pragmatic 
judgment  upon  the  deeper  religious  values. 

Bowne  thus  sums  up  his  argument:  "Con- 
viction must  be  reached  in  life  itself,  and 
this  has  always,  with  scantiest  exception, 
led  the  race  to  theistic  faith,  not,  indeed,  as 

96 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

something  that  can  be  speculatively  demon- 
strated or  against  which  any  cavil  or  objec- 
tion is  impossible,  but  something  which 
represents  the  line  of  least  resistance  for 
human  thought.  The  intelligent  world 
points  to  an  intelligent  author,  the  moral 
world  to  a  moral  author,  the  rational 
world  to  a  rational  author.  This  is  the 
conclusion  which  the  race  has  drawn  and 
the  conclusion  in  which  it  increasingly  rests, 
the  conclusion  which  it  holds  with  more 
and  more  confidence  as  the  ground  of  all 
its  hope  and  the  security  of  its  efforts, 
whether  in  the  field  of  science  and  cogni- 
tion or  of  morality  and  religion.  .  .  .  As- 
suming the  legitimacy  of  life  and  of  our 
human  instincts,  we  may  ask  ourselves  what 
life  implies;  and  Kant  says  it  implies  God, 
freedom,  and  immortality,  as  postulates 
without  which  the  mind  would  fall  into 
discord  with  itself  and  life  would  lose  itself 
in  inner  contradiction.  We  may  then  hold 
these  postulates,  not  as  something  given  by 
the  speculative  reason,  but  as  something 
rooted  in  life."^ 


^  Bowne,  Kant  and  Spencer,  pp.  212,  213. 

97 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  ABSOLUTE  PHILOSOPHY, 
LOTZE  AND  BOWNE 

Is  THE  World  More  than  Knowledge? 

LoTZE  was  the  first  to  successfully  refute 
the  absolute  idealism  of  Hegel.  Neverthe- 
less, he  was  himself  to  be  counted  among 
the  idealists.  He  hoped  to  harmonize  the 
differences  between  modern  scientific 
thought  and  that  romantic  idealism  which 
had  so  largely  characterized  the  meta- 
physics of  the  preceding  generation.  The 
interaction  of  things  in  an  intelligible  uni- 
verse was  to  him  the  best  evidence  of  essen- 
tial unity  between  mind  and  matter.  He 
believed  that  Hegel  had  indicated  a  great 
goal.  He  did  not  believe  with  Hegel  that 
all  truth  can  be  deduced  from  reflection. 
It  was  Lotze's  aim  to  grant  perception,  or 
empirical  knowledge  of  nature,  its  place  in 
thought. 

98 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

"His  philosophy  is  a  persistent  defense  of 
perception  against  reflection,  of  the  concrete 
particular  against  pale  and  vacant  general 
ideas;  it  is  a  powerful  protest  against  in- 
justice to  the  individuality  and  uniqueness 
which  he  found  at  the  core  of  every  fact. 
Thought  with  its  abstract  conceptions  and 
unsubstantial  universals  seemed  to  him  poor 
and  thin  as  compared  with  the  facts  and 
events  of  the  real  world;  every  general  law 
seemed  to  him  to  fall  short  of  reaching  the 
core  and  essence  of  anything  actual."^ 

In  particular  was  Lotze  opposed  to  the 
closed  system  of  idealism  where  everything 
was  so  ordered  in  the  eternal  thought  that 
there  could  by  no  possibility  enter  in  any 
factors  which  had  not  already  been  de- 
termined before  the  world  was,  and  which 
relegated  freedom  to  the  realm  of  shadow 
and  make-believe.  He  believed  that  history 
was  something  more  "than  a  translation  in 
time  of  the  eternally  complete  content  of 
an  ordered  world."  He  concluded,  then, 
that  the  world  is  something  more  than  an 
eternal   thought;    that    it   contains   a  ca- 

'  Jones,  Philosophy  of  Lotze,  p.  9. 

99 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

pacity  for  freedom  and  a  possibility  for  the 
introduction  of  the  unique,  which  is  an 
irresistible  demand  of  the  human  spirit. 
By  his  incisive  criticisms  he  laid  bare  the 
deceptive  generalities  of  the  extreme  He- 
gelian position  and  made  necessary  a  drastic 
modification  of  its  thought. 

Of  What  Does  Reality  Consist  .^^ 

Hegelianism  thought  to  reach  reality  by 
reflection  and  without  the  aid  of  experience. 
Lotze,  on  the  other  hand,  held  steadfastly 
to  the  importance  of  experience  and  main- 
tained that  we  can  understand  it  only  as 
we  grasp  its  inner  continuity.  He  raised 
the  question  of  the  ultimate  nature  of 
reality  by  asserting  that  in  a  united  uni- 
verse of  relations  and  correspondences  ca- 
pable of  being  apprehended  it  must  be  either 
material  or  spiritual.  If  we  are  to  allow 
the  reality  of  anything  outside  matter,  the 
conclusion  is  foregone — the  ultimate  nature 
of  being  is  spiritual.  But  if  we  are  to 
understand  reality,  we  need  to  know  more 
than  the  elements  into  which  it  is  divisible, 
more  than  the  laws  under  which  it  acts;  we 
100 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

must  know  also  its  destination.  Laws  in 
themselves  are  nothing  more  than  the  for- 
mulated sequence  of  events,  the  tabulated 
data  of  experience.  They  can  give  us  little 
concerning  the  ground  of  their  activity.  We 
must  go  back  of  the  law  to  the  apparent 
aim  of  the  uniformity  and  therein  catch  a 
glimpse  of  the  controlling  purpose.  Thus  he 
introduces  into  his  system  the  idea  of  value. 
He  now  proceeds  to  describe  reality  as  the 
realized  law  of  procedure.  It  is  that  in 
which  the  Infinite  Purpose  is  realizing  itself. 
So  far  Lotze  has  scarcely  escaped  the 
absolute  idealism  which  he  aimed  to  super- 
sede. His  world  of  reality  remains  phe- 
nomenal in  spite  of  his  protestations.  This 
phenomenalism  he  endeavored  to  avoid  by 
looking  toward  the  Good  as  the  supreme 
end.  "The  objectivity  of  knowledge  consists 
in  this,  that  it  is  not  a  meaningless  play  of 
illusion,  but  that  it  presents  to  us  a  world 
whose  several  parts  are  linked  and  ordered 
according  to  the  prescription  of  that  which 
is  alone  real  in  the  world,  namely,  the 
good."- 

2  Quoted  by  Stahlin,  Kant,  Lotze  and  Ritschl,  p.  141. 

101 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

Thus  with  Lotze  the  Supreme  Good  is 
the  ultimate  ReaHty  in  whose  existence  all 
other  realities  find  their  ground. 

Bowne's  Debt  to  Lotze 

There  are  many  well-defined  correspond- 
ences between  the  systems  of  Lotze  and 
Bowne.  There  are  many  points  at  which 
Bowne  would  gladly  have  owned  his  obli- 
gation to  his  teacher.  An  examination  of 
these  correspondences  will  be  of  moment 
to  those  who  are  interested  in  Bowne's  phi- 
losophy. 

They  were  at  one  in  the  insistence  upon 
the  difference  between  the  practical  field  of 
science  and  the  speculative  field  of  meta- 
physics, in  which  both  hark  back  to  Kant. 
They  held  that  science  is  properly  limited 
to  the  order  of  coexistence  and  sequence  in 
phenomena  with  reference  to  the  practical 
issues.  To  metaphysics  alone  is  assigned 
the  realm  of  efficient  causality.  The  scien- 
tist may  learn  from  experience  with  phe- 
nomena the  laws  of  their  action  and 
interaction,  but  when  he  goes  back  of 
phenomena  to  discuss  the  nature  of  reality 
102 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

or  being,  he  has  left  the  realm  of  science 
for  that  of  philosophy. 

Both  discerned  the  folly  of  an  attempt  to 
understand  nature  simply  by  a  method  of 
classification.  They  called  attention  to  the 
emptiness  of  such  endeavors  so  far  as  the 
problem  of  reality  is  concerned.  Classifica- 
tion is  a  method  of  intelligence  the  better 
to  handle  its  materials.  Classification  in  no 
wise  changes  the  things  classified  or  reveals 
their  back-lying  reality. 

Both  philosophers  pointed  out  the  as- 
tounding claims  of  atomism  to  an  eflSciency 
which  in  the  end  would  endow  each  separate 
atom  with  a  purpose,  wisdom,  and  knowl- 
edge of  other  atoms  far  superior  to  human 
intelligence,  and  with  a  proclivity  for  peace 
remarkable  in  this,  that  in  a  divided  world 
of  innumerable  atoms  there  should  be  any 
working  in  relations  at  all.  Instead  of 
naturalism  being  free  from  the  dark  realm 
of  magic  and  unaccountable  powers,  she  is 
rather  the  high  priestess  of  superstition  with 
her  powerful  demiurges  of  atoms. 

They  saw  the  impossibility  of  assuming 
the  absentee  God  of  absolute  idealism. 
103 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

Such  a  God  would  find  himself,  at  the  best, 
working  at  cross  purposes  in  a  disjointed 
world,  and  gradually  realizing  his  thought 
through  the  slow-struggling  intelligence  of 
man  and  accomplishing  his  own  moral  char- 
acter in  the  slower  moving  ebb  and  flow  of 
the  tides  of  human  action. 

They  saw  that  neither  pluralism  which 
springs  from  atomism  nor  the  pantheism 
which  springs  from  Absolutism  was  suffi- 
cient to  explain  the  world  and  leave  place 
on  the  one  hand  for  individuality  and  on 
the  other  for  freedom. 

They  were  alike  in  recognizing  the  ab- 
surdities which  left  Absolutism  in  the  clouds. 
Lotze  felt  himself  to  be  sufficiently  definite 
when  he  referred  everything  to  the  Supreme 
Good.  Bowne  went  on  to  declare  that  the 
world  of  experience  can  be  maintained  as 
real  only  as  it  is  grounded  in  a  Supreme 
Personality  from  whom  all  things  forever 
proceed. 

Bowne  possessed  Lotze's  view  concerning 

the  barren  round  of  mechanical  causation 

assumed  by  materialism,  in  which  there  can 

be  no  possibility  of  progress,  no  chance  for 

104. 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

the  introduction  of  unique  factors  of  ad- 
vance. They  were  one  likewise  in  recogni- 
tion of  the-  corresponding  weakness  of  an 
Absolute  who  contained  all  in  himself,  and 
in  whom  was  buried  also  all  possibility  of 
human  freedom,  that  novelty  that  forever 
spells  progress  in  the  history  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  race. 

Bowne's  Advance  on  Lotze's  System 

It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  Bowne  received 
many  of  the  features  of  his  system  from 
Lotze.  In  the  clearness  of  his  critical 
faculties  he  was  remarkably  like  Lotze.  It 
is  also  fair  to  say  that  Bowne  overcame 
the  weaknesses  inherent  in  Lotze's  system 
and  carried  it  out  to  a  more  logical  con- 
clusion. 

In  his  definition  of  reality,  Lotze  is  need- 
lessly vague.  His  shortest  and  most  direct 
definition  of  reality  is  that  it  is  the  realized 
law  of  procedure.  This  definition  points  to- 
ward activism,  but  it  is  not  thoroughgoing 
enough.  Its  reality  is  still  phenomenal, 
existing  only  in  the  absolute  purpose.  What 
he  was  aiming  for  was  a  reality  whose  real- 
105 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

ness  lay  in  the  very  act  of  a  Divine  Purpose 
realizing  itself. 

Bowne's  definition  of  reality  was  not  only 
more  clear  and  simple,  but  also  more  pro- 
found. With  him  reality  is  that  which  can 
act  or  be  acted  upon.  Thus  he  makes  way 
for  matter  and  mind  and  God. 

Lotze  pointed  out  the  fact  that  we  must 
discover  some  continuity  behind  the  ebb  and 
flow  of  matter  and  even  of  human  experience 
if  we  are  to  find  out  the  meaning  of  the 
world.  Bowne  carried  the  thought  up  to 
secure  footing  and  made  the  relation  of 
thought  and  thing  clear.  He  affirmed  that 
the  desired  continuity  can  be  found  alone 
in  personality.  Personality  is  the  only 
power  of  which  we  are  conscious  that  can 
join  the  sundered  experiences  of  time  and 
space  into  a  unity  and  look  upon  all  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  one.  Thus  alone,  he 
argues,  is  unity  possible  in  the  world.  The 
universe  finds  its  unity  in  the  thought  of  a 
Supreme  Personality,  himself  the  unchang- 
ing cause  of  change. 

Thus  Lotze's  vague  Purpose  of  the  Su- 
preme Good,  which  he  considers  the  funda- 
106 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

mental  reality,  gives  way  to  a  Person  who 
is  also  the  World-Ground.  Both  the  ma- 
terial universe  and  the  individual  mind  fall 
into  step  because  both  proceed  from  the 
same  source.  Our  intelligences  were  made 
for  the  true  understanding  of  the  world. 
What  the  general  mind  reports  is  true  be- 
cause the  world  was  made  for  our  intelli- 
gence. In  this  way  the  idea  with  which 
Lotze  began  was  given  a  new  and  richer 
and  more  powerful  content. 

If  Lotze  had  thus  completed  his  system, 
he  would  have  been  free  from  the  criticism 
of  one  of  the  most  skillful  and  friendly 
critics,  who  declared  that  his  cardinal  de- 
fect lay  at  this  point.  This  writer  says: 
"He  may,  like  the  ordinary  consciousness, 
maintain  the  necessity  of  nature,  and  the 
freedom  of  men,  and  the  omnipresence  of 
God;  he  may  give  man  all  his  own  way, 
which  is  essential  to  morality,  and  God  all 
His  own  way,  which  is  essential  to  religion, 
and  thus  permit  both  these  forces  which 
mold  the  higher  destinies  of  mankind  to 
exist  together.  But  he  must  also  strive  to 
reconcile  them.  Truth  for  him  must  not  be 
107 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

a  thing  of  aspects  and  phases  merely;  he 
must  not  agree  with  the  common  con- 
sciousness in  its  f ragmen tariness."^ 

Herein  is  the  chief  point  of  difference  be- 
tween Lotze  and  Bowne.  Lotze  stops  short 
of  asserting  personahty  of  the  World- 
Ground  and  leaves  the  fundamental  reality 
only  less  vague  than  Hegel's  absolute. 
Bowne  presses  on  to  the  assertion  of  per- 
sonality in  the  World-Ground  with  all  that 
such  an  assertion  implies.  He  thus  carries 
the  metaphysical  problem  up  into  religion 
and  is  able  thereby  to  bring  about  that  very 
reconciliation  between  science  and  religion 
which  was  Lotze's  own  aim. 

Bowne's  position  is  well  disclosed  in  a 
passage  in  his  last  work  touching  the  ideal- 
ist position,  in  which  he  says:  "Being  in 
this  world  is  nothing  more  than  having  a 
certain  form  and  type  of  experience  with 
certain  familiar  conditions.  Passing  out  of 
this  world  into  another  would  mean  simply 
not  a  transition  through  space,  but  passing 
into  a  new  form  and  type  of  experience  dif- 
ferently constituted  from  the  present.    And 

'  Jones,  Philosophy  of  Lotze,  p.  13. 

108 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

how  many  of  these  systems  are  possible  or 
to  what  extent  this  change  might  go  is 
altogether  beyond  us.  Of  course  these  many 
systems  would  all  be  objectively  founded; 
that  is,  they  would  be  rooted  in  the  will  and 
purpose  of  the  Creator,  and  they  would  also 
be  one  in  the  sense  that  the  creative  purpose 
would  comprise  them  all  in  one  plan;  but 
they  would  not  be  one  in  the  sense  of  being 
phases  or  aspects  of  one  absolute  reality. 
They  would  be  stages  in  God's  unfolding 
plan,  but  not  aspects  of  the  static  universe. 
This  static  universe  is  a  phantom  of  ab- 
stract thought.  The  only  reality  is  God 
and  his  progressively  unfolding  plan  and 
purpose  and  work,  and  the  world  of  finite 
spirits.  In  this  case  also  we  should  have  a 
relativity  but  not  an  illusion,  a  validity  of 
knowledge  within  the  sphere  which  finds  its 
ground  and  warrant  in  the  plan  and  pur- 
pose of  the  Creator."* 

*  Bowne,  Kant  and  Spencer,  pp.  145,  146. 


109 


SECTION  III 
PRAGMATISM 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  UNMETAPHYSICAL  PRAGMA- 
TISM OF  WILLIAM  JAMES 

The  Pragmatic  Element  in  the  History 
OF  Philosophy 

Protagoras  is  said  to  have  been  the 
originator  of  the  watchword  of  pragmatism 
— "Man  is  the  measure  of  all  things."  The 
phrase  and  the  doctrine  have  unpleasant 
connections,  however,  for  Protagoras  and 
the  Sophists  to  whose  school  he  belonged 
meant  thereby  all  that  the  word  "sophism" 
has  come  to  imply  in  modern  life.  In  the 
words  of  Eucken,  "Man  the  measure  of  all 
things,"  meant  for  them  "A  renunciation  of 
all  universally  valid  standards,  a  surrender 
of  truth  to  man's  momentary  caprice  and 
fluctuating  inclinations.  In  other  words,  it 
implied  that  everything  may  be  turned  this 
way  or  that  and  differently  judged,  accord- 
ing to  the  point  of  view;  that  what  appears 
113 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

as  the  right  may  be  represented  as  the 
wrong,  and  conversely;  and  that  any  cause 
may  be  championed  according  to  the  neces- 
sities of  the  case  or  to  one's  whim.  In  this 
manner  Hfe  is  gradually  degraded  into  a 
means  of  the  profit,  the  self-indulgence,  even 
the  sport  of  the  single  individual,  who 
acknowledges  no  restraints,  feels  no  re- 
spect; .  .  .  thus  the  good  yields  to  the 
profitable;  all  valuations  become  relative. 
.  .  .  Such  a  doctrine  of  relativity  .  .  . 
raised  to  a  sovereign  position,  .  .  .  becomes 
the  deadly  enemy  of  everything  great  and 
true."i 

The  pragmatic  movement  came  in  Greece 
after  the  climax  of  her  brilliant  age  had 
passed.  The  touch  of  disorganization  and 
decay  had  struck  into  her  civilization.  Old 
faiths  and  old  institutions  were  breaking 
before  an  incoming  tide  of  individualism. 

That  system  which  had  such  questionable 
origin  with  the  Sophists  became  with  the 
Stoics  a  judgment  by  moral  values,  and 
here  perhaps  reached  its  highest  and  noblest 
influence.     It  appears   in  the  sensualistic 

^  Eucken,  The  Problem  of  Human  Life,  p.  14. 

114 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

system  of  Epicurus,  to  whom  the  criterion 
of  truth  becomes  the  sensation  of  pleasure 
as  contrasted  with  pain.^ 

We  again  see  the  pragmatic  postulate  in 
the  teachings  of  Pyrrho  and  the  new  acad- 
emy. They  hold  it  as  the  foundation  of 
knowledge.  Arcesilaus  named  probabilism  as 
the  only  rule  of  practical  life.  Carneades 
introduced  the  idea  of  degrees  of  proba- 
bility. To  the  eclectics,  that  was  truth 
which  appeared  to  be  true.  In  the  end, 
when  both  scientific  and  deductive  truth 
have  been  rid  of  all  reality,  we  reach  the 
reaction  of  neo-platonism  with  its  affirma- 
tion of  truth  by  revelation  alone. 

Modern  pragmatism  applies  the  thought 
of  value,  not  primarily  to  the  moral  and 
aesthetic,  as  did  the  Stoics,  but  to  reality 
itself.  Davidson  has  called  attention  to  the 
fact  that  the  new  element  in  modern  prag- 
matism is  to  bring  knowledge  as  well  as 
aesthetics  and  ethics  to  the  test  of  practical 
value.^    The  modern  pragmatists  do  not  by 


^  Compare  Janet  and  Seailles,  History  of  the  Problems  of 
Philosophy,  p.  103. 

8  The  Stoic  Creed,  p.  256. 

115 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

any  means  agree  in  the  phase  of  the  system 
which  is  most  important.  Mr.  Pierce  re- 
vived the  name  for  modern  philosophy. 
r.  C.  S.  Schiller  is  interested  in  giving  the 
movement  a  particularly  subjectivistic  turn. 
James  has  pursued  the  line  of  Realism. 
Because  of  the  extended  influence  of  the 
latter,  and  the  commonness  with  which  his 
name  is  associated  with  the  term  "prag- 
matism," we  shall  confine  ourselves  to  the 
discussion  of  his  particular  system. 

Can  the  Pragmatic  Test  of  Truth  Be 
Maintained.^ 

In  the  chapter  on  "The  Notion  of  Truth," 
in  his  volume  on  pragmatism,  James  justly 
balks  at  the  vague  abstractions  of  the  defi- 
nition of  truth  given  by  the  rationalists. 
He  quotes  Taylor's  definition,  "Truth  is  the 
system  of  propositions  which  have  an  uncon- 
ditional claim  to  be  recognized  as  valid," 
and  also  Rickert's  statement  that  "Truth  is 
a  name  for  all  those  judgments  which  we 
find  ourselves  under  obligations  to  make  by 
a  kind  of  imperative  duty."  These  defini- 
tions of  truth  James  declares  "unutterable 
116 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

triviality."  While  we  sympathize  with  him 
in  his  revolt  from  any  attempt  at  making 
truth  a  mere  abstraction,  we  cannot  be 
blind  to  the  commission  of  the  same  error 
of  abstraction  by  James  himself  when  he 
substitutes  "vcrify-able"  for  "verify-cation" 
under  exigency.  What  both  James  and  his 
rationalist  opponents  are  aiming  for  is  an 
independent  norm  of  truth.  This  fact  James 
desired  to  conceal  while  the  rationalists 
openly  admitted  it.  By  "verify-able"  James 
means  that  there  is  a  common-to-all  which 
makes  it  possible  for  the  individual  to  com- 
pare his  judgment  with  the  common  judg- 
ment of  others.  Thus  only  can  he  push  the 
borders  of  knowledge  past  his  individual 
experiences  to  truths  imparted  by  others 
and  which  he  might  verify  if  circumstances 
permitted.  He  could  better  have  shown  the 
error  of  the  rationalist  definition  of  truth  by 
calling  attention  to  its  fallacy  of  the  ab- 
stract. He  would  also  have  secured  the 
desired  concreteness  by  open  acknowledg- 
ment of  a  common-to-all  in  human  ex- 
perience by  which  the  individual  can  verify 
his  own  conclusions  respecting  phenomena. 

117 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

But  Mr.  James  tells  us  that  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  truth  independent,  and  by 
this,  if  he  is  consistent,  he  means  truth  in- 
dependent of  concrete  individual  experience. 
He  declares,  "The  pragmatist  clings  to  facts 
and  concreteness,  observes  truth  at  its  work 
in  particular  cases,  and  generalizes."  He 
does  not,  however,  show  us  the  "value"  of 
this  generalization  in  a  world  in  which  truth 
is  to  be  found  only  in  concrete  individual 
cases.  How  is  the  pragmatist  to  possess 
any  certainty  that  his  intellectual  effort  of 
synthesis  represents  any  corresponding  real- 
ity? Indeed,  it  could  not  apart  from  a 
higher  and  uniting  intelligence. 

Again  he  says,  "True  ideas  are  those  that 
we  can  assimilate,  validate,  corroborate,  and 
verify.  False  ideas  are  those  we  cannot." 
Here,  moving  on  the  individualistic  plane, 
are  certain  difficulties  that  give  no  promise 
of  solution.  The  jungle-dweller  who  is  told 
for  the  first  time  that  the  earth  is  round 
might  be  utterly  unable  either  to  assimilate, 
validate,  corroborate,  or  verify  the  state- 
ment. Would  his  inability  in  this  respect 
justify  him  in  putting  the  conception  of 

118 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

rotundity  in  the  region  of  false  ideas? 
Would  the  truth  thereby  be  imperiled? 
Still  there  are  some  who  profess  to  believe 
that  the  roundness  of  the  earth  would  re- 
main presumably  beyond  question.  It 
would  seem  to  come  perilously  close  to 
being  a  truth  independent  of  this  man's 
concrete  individual  experience.  It  might 
conceivably  be  beyond  the  concrete  indi- 
vidual experience  of  any  dweller  upon  the 
earth,  as  in  the  days  before  the  rotundity  of 
the  earth  was  discovered.  Was  or  was  it  not 
true?  Would  the  earth  continue  round  in 
the  absence  of  human  life  and  intelligence? 
Evidently,  the  chief  pragmatist  himself 
was  troubled  with  evil  dreams,  for  a  few 
pages  later  he  declares  that  "verify -ability" 
will  do  as  well  as  "verify -cation"  anyway. 
Here  he  jumps  again  from  the  particular  to 
the  general  without  sensing  it.  If  he  would 
rescue  truth  from  the  uncertainties  of  indi- 
vidual experiences,  he  could  do  so  by  posit- 
ing a  Personality  as  the  World-Ground.  He 
could  thus  have  saved  his  pragmatism  and 
have  maintained  his  ground  against  ration- 
alism. 

119 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

Respecting  his  definition  of  truth  as  that 
which  serves  an  end  or  a  purpose,  Davidson^ 
very  justly  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that 
purpose  or  end  implies  an  intellectual  ele- 
ment at  utter  variance  with  the  pragmatic 
claim  that  it  is  not  man's  intellect  or  reason 
which  determines  reality  and  truth,  but  his 
will  and  his  feelings. 

So  the  pragmatic  definition  of  truth,  while 
attempting  to  avoid  the  abstractions  of  ab- 
solute idealism,  becomes  the  prey  of  a 
solipsistic  individualism,  because,  spurning 
the  assistance  of  metaphysics,  it  has  no 
intelligent  ground.  At  any  rate,  the  serious- 
minded  cannot  be  satisfied  with  a  test  of 
value  for  truth  which  shall  be  merely  human 
and  relative.  "We  have  outgrown  the 
standard  of  a  welfare  merely  human,  and 
all  the  values  of  such  a  welfare  cannot  blind 
us  to  their  narrowness  and  emptiness."^ 

Are  Space  and  Time  the  Abiding 

Realities.'* 
Unwilling  to  affirm  any  continuity  which 
falls   outside   the   realm   of   concrete   indi- 

*  The  Stoic  Creed,  p.  263. 

^  Eucken,  Knowledge  and  Life,  p.  83. 

120 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

vidual  experience,  because  that  would  be 
untrue  to  pragmatism,  James  is  forced  to 
seek  some  continuity  which  will  hold  his 
disunited  and  pluralistic  world  together  long 
enough  to  consider  the  situation.  This  con- 
tinuity he  gains  in  a  thoroughly  naturalistic 
way  by  assuming  time  and  space  as  the 
abiding  realities.  "Space  and  time  are  thus 
vehicles  of  continuity  by  which  the  world's 
parts  hang  together,"^  One  must  think  of 
space  and  time  both  as  objectively  real.  Of 
them  he  says:  "Just  as  atoms,  not  half  or 
quarter  atoms,  are  the  minimum  of  matter 
that  can  be,  and  every  finite  amount  of 
matter  contains  a  finite  number  of  atoms, 
so  any  amounts  of  time,  space,  change,  etc., 
which  we  might  assume  would  be  composed 
of  a  finite  number  of  minimal  amounts  of 
time,  space,  and  change."^ 

One  scarcely  knows  whether  to  be  more 
surprised  at  the  naive  boldness  in  presenting 
such  crudities  or  the  uncritical  state  of  the 
mind  that  could  formulate  them.  In  the 
first   place,    the   unseeable   and   imaginary 

•  James,  Pragmatism,  p.  134. 

^  Some  Problems  of  Philosophy,  p.  154. 

121 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

atom  is  reduced  in  words  to  finite  and 
ponderable  reality.  Then  such  subjective 
ideas  as  space  and  time  are  spoken  of  as  if 
they  could  be  reckoned  in  the  same  way. 
If  there  is  any  meaning,  it  would  seem  as  if 
one  might  trade  a  chunk  of  his  space  for 
another's  time,  and  so  prolong  life  by  re- 
ducing the  dimensions  of  his  "verify-able" 
world. 

The  resulting  mystification  regarding  the 
nature  of  time  is  shown  in  his  view  of  the 
verification  of  history  by  the  individual. 
He  says:  "The  stream  of  time  can  be  re- 
mounted only  verbally,  or  verified  indirectly 
by  the  present  prolongations  or  effects  of 
what  the  past  harbored.  Yet  if  they  agree 
with  these  verbalities  and  effects,  we  can 
know  that  our  ideas  of  the  past  are  true. 
As  true  as  past  time  itself  was,  so  true  was 
Julius  Csesar,  so  true  were  antediluvian 
monsters,  all  in  their  proper  dates  and 
settings."^ 

Truth  being  confined  to  concrete  indi- 
vidual experience  by  Mr.  James's  funda- 
mental postulate,  it  would  seem  easier  to 

*  Pragmatism,  pp.  214,  215. 

12g 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

take  his  say-so  for  the  foregoing  than  to 
attempt  to  reach  any  consistent  ground  for 
such  a  view  of  time. 

The  fact  is  that  time  is  nothing  apart 
from  an  abiding  personaHty  to  relate  its 
flowing  events  each  to  each  and  all  to  some 
unmoving  center.  But  once  this  is  granted, 
the  disunited  world  in  time  and  space  falls 
into  wondrous  unity  which  would  be  quite 
upsetting  to  the  pluralistic  mind,  which  the 
pluralistic  mind  will  not  acknowledge  but 
without  which  it  cannot  think.  He  should 
have  become  aware  that  the  "connecting 
medium"  was  no  less  than  personality  when 
he  talks  about  the  relationships  of  life 
breaking  up  into  little  worlds,  or  a  multi- 
tude of  small  systems. 

Pluralism  a  Confession  of  Failure  to 
Unite  Subject  and  Object 

Being  unable  from  the  empirical  stand- 
point to  found  any  real  unity,  James  turns 
to  pluralism  as  a  means  of  escape  from  the 
insistent  problems  arising  out  of  the  con- 
trast between  mind  and  matter,  subject  and 
object.    The  mere  thought  of  any  essential 

123 


PERSON ALISM  AND  THE 

unity  seems  repugnant.  He  says,  "If  our 
intellect  had  been  as  much  interested  in 
disjunctive  as  it  is  in  conjunctive  relations, 
philosophy  would  have  equally  successfully 
celebrated  the  world's  disunion."^  "Ay, 
there's  the  rub  .  .  .  what  dreams!"  Why 
is  the  intellect  not  equally  interested  in 
establishing  a  disjunctive  world?  The  rea- 
son is  a  very  good  one.  It  is  because  it  is 
as  mentally  impossible  to  seriously  think  a 
disjunctive  world  as  to  think  a  topsy-turvy 
world.  If  we  can  find  no  higher  unity,  it 
will  inevitably  be  this,  that  there  is  a  world 
of  various  relations  all  of  which  are  grasped 
by  our  intelligence  and  are  thought  of  as 
*'our"  world.  Even  pragmatists  are  driven 
to  this  common  expedient  before  they  can 
tell  us  what  pragmatism  and  pluralism  are. 
The  fact  that  the  world  can  be  understood 
by  us  is  a  principle  of  unity  in  itself,  which 
must  be  removed  before  pluralism  can  be 
admitted.  Unity  does  not  depend,  as  the 
pragmatists  seem  to  think,  upon  chemical 
spatial  and  social  interaction  between  given 
individuals.     The  apple  does  not  quarrel 

•  Pragmatism,  p.  137. 

124 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

with  the  banana  because  both  cannot  grow 
on  the  same  tree  nor  in  the  same  chmate. 
They  are  not  for  that  reason  parts  of  other 
and  disunited  worlds.  They  both  find  a 
unity  in  the  comprehension  of  very  ordinary 
mortals  as  being  in  the  same  world  and  in 
spite  of  diversity  yielding  obedience  to  the 
same  laws. 

Can  Pragmatic  Pluralism  Reach  Free- 
dom OR  Solve  the  Problem  of  Evil.^^ 

One  reason  that  Mr.  James  assigned  for 
denying  a  unitary  world  was  to  save  some 
place  in  it  for  novelty  and  innovation.  ^° 
The  effort  to  escape  the  meshes  of  absolut- 
ism on  the  one  hand,  and  to  avoid  the 
necessities  of  empiricism  on  the  other,  so  as 
to  gain  a  place  in  the  world  for  freedom,  is 
a  laudable  one.  But  here  pluralism  offers 
only  a  false  hope.  The  common  example  of 
absolute  innovation  in  our  world  is  that 
which  is  introduced  by  the  free  human 
spirit.  The  moment  a  free  intelligence  is 
posited  as  the  world  ground  we  have  our 
freedom  and  not  in  any  otherwise. 

^^  Some  Problems  in  Philosophy,  p.  132. 

125 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

In  similar  manner  pluralism  congratulates 
itself  on  having  escaped  the  problem  of  evil. 
It  escapes  it  in  the  sense  that  having  neither 
God  nor  absolute  the  presence  of  the  prob- 
lem need  not  be  accounted  for  as  a  moral 
obligation.  But  in  the  very  same  terms 
whereby  it  escapes  the  problem  it  also 
makes  void  all  moral  responsibility  in  the 
individual.  If  that  is  truth  which  the  indi- 
vidual sees  at  the  moment — and  we  must 
hold  pluralistic  pragmatism  to  its  principles 
here — then  any  independent  norm  of  right 
moral  action  is  as  ridiculous  as  the  abstrac- 
tions of  idealism.  The  maintenance  of  laws 
and  the  punishment  of  offenders  against 
such  ideal  right  is  involved  in  the  same 
category.  What  the  individual  sees  for  the 
moment  is  the  true  and  the  good.  The 
individual  cannot  be  blamed  for  not  seeing 
other  than  as  it  presents  itself  to  him. 
Along  with  the  heralded  escape  from  the 
problem  of  evil  has  come  likewise  the 
escape  from  moral  responsibility.  One  is 
reminded  of  what  Professor  Eucken  says  of 
the  moral  degradation  which  followed  in 
the  wake  of  the  sophistic  pragmatism  and 
126 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

which  was  quoted  in  the  early  part  of  this 
chapter.  Of  course  Mr.  James  did  not 
intend  this  result,  for  in  another  place  he 
criticizes  materialism  because  it  rules  out 
the  moral  order  of  the  world.^^ 

Yet  with  all  his  love  for  a  disunited  world, 
Mr.  James  seems  to  tell  us  of  a  certain  sort 
of  unity,  a  unity  of  nature  that  is  coming  to 
pass  gradually  in  proportion  as  we  verify 
our  ideas.  It  would  be  difficult  to  explain 
such  a  unity  except  as  a  subjective  and  in- 
tellectual one,  as  the  mind  reaches  conclu- 
sions, classifies  and  generalizes  its  knowl- 
edge. But  we  have  already  been  warned  to 
abhor  all  intellectualism,  so  that  even  this 
poor  attempt  at  unity  would  seem  to  be 
denied  to  a  consistent  pragmatist. 

The  whole  subject  of  pluralism  has  thus 
been  summed  up  by  a  recent  writer,  who 
says:  "As  regards  pragmatism,  it  does  not 
furnish  us  with  a  pluralistic  universe,  but 


"  Pragmatism,  pp.  105-107.  For  a  discussion  of  the  rela- 
tion of  the  Scholastic  Free  Thinkers  to  Pragmatism  in  judging 
religion  by  its  utility,  politically,  morally,  and  socially,  and 
the  afErmation  that  this  is  the  necessary  outcome  of  any 
pragmatism  not  theistically  grounded,  see  Lange,  History  of 
Materialism,  vol.  i,  pp.  222fr. 

127 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

with  a  thinker  who  interrupts  his  thinking, 
an  experimenter  who  breaks  off  his  experi- 
ment, whenever  it  suits  his  feehngs.  Prag- 
matistic  thought  resembles  the  artist's 
thought,  in  so  far  as  both  not  only  build 
for  the  Heart's  Desire,  but  also  (as  Omar 
Khayyam  forgot  to  mention)  break  off  and 
sweep  away  its  own  construction  whenever 
the  logical  necessities,  that  is,  the  'peculiari- 
ties independent  of  his  wishes,  begin  to  bore 
or  annoy  it.  The  pluralistic  pragmatist 
takes  advantage  of  the  fact  (for  even  he 
must  build  with  facts!)  that  we  need  not 
always  think  on  and  07i,  that  there  are  other 
subjects  and  other  points  of  view;  in  short, 
that  although  the  independent  universe  rolls 
on  in  its  established  manner,  with  or  without 
the  music  of  the  spheres  and  the  hymn  of 
Goethe's  archangels,  human  attention  can 
turn  upon  its  ear  and  for  a  while  dream  of 
its  own  juicy  cabbages  or  intoxicating  efful- 
gent roses.  "^^ 

In  commenting  on  Plato's  search  for  the 
absolute,  Eucken  has  given  in  clear  state- 
ment the  argument  against  all  such  prag- 

'2  Vernon  Lee,  Vital  Lies,  vol.  ii,  pp.  171,  172. 

128 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

matic  schemes  of  life.  "Every  human  un- 
dertaking wliich  seeks  to  be  self-sufficient, 
and  to  avoid  all  responsibility  to  superior 
authority,  he  looks  upon  as  petty  and  neces- 
sarily inadequate.  Dominated  by  a  hollow 
show  of  independence,  such  efforts  can  never 
produce  more  than  the  appearance  of  virtue 
and  happiness,  which  is  rendered  repulsive 
by  its  self-complacency.  .  .  .  However 
much  that  is  problematic  may  remain  in 
Plato's  Doctrine  of  Ideas,  the  latter  dis- 
closes a  great  truth  which  we  cannot  re- 
linquish. And  that  is  the  recognition  of 
the  fact  that  there  is  a  realm  of  truth  beyond 
the  likes  and  dislikes  of  men;  that  truths  are 
valid,  not  because  of  our  consent,  but  inde- 
pendently of  it,  and  in  a  sphere  raised  above 
all  human  opinion  and  power.  Such  a 
conviction  is  the  foundation  of  the  inde- 
pendence of  science,  and  of  the  secure 
upbuilding  of  civilization;  only  a  self- 
dependent  truth  can  provide  laws  and 
norms  which  elevate  human  existence  be- 
cause they  unite  it."^^ 

^^  Eucken,  Problem  of  Human  Life,  pp.  18-21. 

129 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 


CHAPTER  IX 

BOWNE'S  PRAGMATISM,  "A  STEP  IN 
THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  PHIL- 
OSOPHY" 

A  Pragmatic  Definition  of  Being 

F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  in  attacking  the  abso- 
lutist idea  of  God  from  the  pragmatic 
standpoint,  declares  that  the  pragmatic  de- 
pendence of  meaning  on  purpose  "negatives 
the  notion  that  truth  can  depend  on  how 
things  would  appear  to  an  all-embracing,  or 
'absolute'  mind.  For  such  a  mind  could 
have  no  purpose.  It  could  not,  that  is, 
select  part  of  its  content  as  an  object  of 
special  interest  to  be  operated  upon  or 
aimed  at.  In  human  minds,  on  the  other 
hand,  meaning  is  always  selective  and 
purposive."^ 

Bowne  is  equally  antagonistic  to  the 
closed  system  of  the  absolutist.     He  too  re- 

*  Schiller,  Humanism,  p.  10. 

130 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

fused  to  accept  a  pantheistic  God  appearing 
in  all  his  creations  and  depending  upon 
them  for  his  own  being,  hence  thinking 
evil  with  their  evil  thoughts  and  bound  to 
a  hideous  and  unethical  world  which  really 
is  himself.  But  we  must  take  note  of  what 
Schiller's  interpretation  does  to  the  system. 
With  him  truth  becomes  thoroughly  indi- 
vidualistic. One  man's  "truth"  is  on  as 
secure  a  footing  as  another's.  One  man's 
illusions,  he  being  the  judge  of  his  truth, 
are  as  valid  as  the  most  plausible  conclu- 
sions of  another.  Schiller  seems  to  feel  that 
there  cannot  be  an  independent  norm  of 
truth,  apart  from  Absolutism.  In  the  en- 
deavor to  get  away  from  all  ideas  of  truth 
as  an  abstraction  he  makes  void  the  value 
of  concrete  and  particular  truth. 

Bowne  retains  his  pragmatism,  and  shows 
the  emptiness  of  the  absolute  position  with- 
out surrendering  truth  that  shall  be  valid 
for  all.  He  does  this  through  his  definition 
of  being.  We  have  already  noted  his  defini- 
tion of  the  real  as  that  which  can  act  or  be 
acted  upon.  The  definition  of  being  nat- 
urally follows.  It  is  neither  an  Abstract 
131 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

Supreme  Idea,  nor  an  Unknowable  sub- 
stance as  the  base  of  phenomena.  Being  is 
impHed  in  the  capacity  for  intelHgent  causal 
action,  or  the  capacity  of  being  intelligently 
acted  upon.  He  would  join  with  the  prag- 
matists  in  saying  that  there  is  no  being 
apart  from  purpose,  meaning,  by  that,  in- 
telligent purpose.  All  that  exists,  then,  is 
the  result  or  manifestation  of  a  supreme 
active  or  purposive  intelligence  and  includes 
the  world  of  lesser  intelligences.  It  has  no 
meaning  apart  from  this  intelligence,  which 
is  its  ground.  Mind  can  understand  the 
movement  of  matter  because  both  proceed 
from  the  same  ground.  The  mind  grasps 
the  meaning  of  the  world  because  it  owns  a 
kinship  with  the  intelligence  that  creates 
the  world.  It  is  itself  purposive  and  self- 
directing  within  the  world-order.  This 
definition  of  being  escapes  the  pantheistic 
conclusion  of  absolutism  and  also  avoids 
the  mechanical  determinism  of  empiricism. 
All  being  is,  then,  according  to  Bowne, 
essentially  causal  and  active.^  In  reaching 
this  conclusion  he  guards  his  position  by  a 

*  For  discussion  see  Bowne,  Metaphysics,  p.  17. 

132 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

very  important  discrimination  between  phe- 
nomenal or  inductive  as  contrasted  with 
metaphysical  efficiency,  which  is  the  imma- 
nent causality  of  a  Fundamental  Unitary 
Being.  Phenomenal  causality  refers  to  the 
laws  of  change  in  phenomena  which  give  us 
the  anticipated  order  of  events  of  science. 
These  may  be  studied,  classified,  and  veri- 
fied without  reference  to  their  metaphysical 
ground.  Metaphysical  efficiency  has  refer- 
ence to  that  Supreme  Intelligent  Purpose 
by  which  all  things  subsist,  and  which  must 
be  affirmed  if  there  is  to  be  any  true  knowl- 
edge or  if  the  sundered  sides  of  conscious- 
ness are  to  be  united.^ 

The  Escape  from  Pluralism  and 
Absolutism  to  World-Unity 

Convinced  that  there  can  be  no  unity 
without  a  closed  system,  with  no  real  free- 
dom and  no  novelty,  the  pluralists  have 
rushed  to  the  maintenance  of  a  disjunctive 
universe.  But  a  disjunctive  universe  is  as 
much  of  an  impossibility  to  thought  in  a 
sane   and  intelligible  world  as  a  universe 

3  Ibid.,  pp.  83-90. 

133 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

absolutely  predetermined  by  a  Supreme 
Idea  or  by  the  mechanical  necessities  of 
materialism.  The  refuge  taken  in  a  pluralis- 
tic universe  is  simply  the  attempt  to  flee 
from  one  irrationality  to  a  greater.  We 
find  pluralism  unable  to  reconcile  change 
and  identity  on  its  impersonal  plane.  The 
demon  of  determinism  may  be  momentarily 
exorcised,  but  with  the  resulting  return  of 
seven  other  demons  worse  than  itself.  In 
maintaining  a  pluralistic  universe  the  plu- 
ralist does  not  make  it  disjunctive  enough 
to  be  consistent.  Unless  he  preserves  a 
certain  amount  of  unity,  the  unity  of  a 
mind  able  to  grasp  the  fleeting  events  of 
time  and  the  baffling  appearances  of  change, 
all  knowledge  would  be  meaningless.  Even 
pluralism  would  become  a  jargon  of  words. 
The  baseless  fears  of  pluralism  spring  from 
a  failure  adequately  to  define  the  meaning 
of  unity.  Bowne^  points  out  the  fact  that 
the  only  real  unity  of  which  we  are  directly 
aware  is  the  unity  of  the  free  and  conscious 
self.  The  self  survives  the  passing  events 
of  experience,  relates  them  to  itself  under 

*  Metaphysics,  p.  91. 

134 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

the  forms  of  time  and  space,  and  makes 
itself  the  center  of  a  multitudinous  and 
rapidly  changing  world.  That  there  is  any 
higher  unity  than  this  synthesis  of  the 
world  by  the  individual  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  one  is  not  alone  in  the  universe  of 
intelligence,  but  is  surrounded  by  a  world 
of  self-conscious  intelligences  which  are 
themselves  comprehended  in  synthesis  by  a 
Supreme  Personal  Intelligence.  Through 
self-conscious  and  self-acting  personality 
alone  can  the  world  be  brought  into  sub- 
stantial unity.  The  experiences  of  the  in- 
dividual, then,  become  something  more  than 
peculiar  to  himself  and  valid  for  more  than 
himself.  Living  in  a  world  of  intelligences, 
which  is  maintained  by  intelligence,  his  idea 
of  truth  must  conform,  not  only  to  the 
common-to-all,  but,  higher  than  this,  to  the 
order  of  an  intelligible  world.  Thus  at  a 
single  stroke  are  we  rid  of  the  conflict  be- 
tween mind  and  matter,  noumena  and  phe- 
nomena, and  the  disjointed  and  illogical 
world  of  pluralism.  This  is  done  also  with- 
out resort  to  an  idealism  which,  though 
grand  in  its  conception,  is  death  to  the 
135 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

maintenance  of  freedom  and  individuality. 
How  strongly  Bowne  felt  toward  the  out- 
come of  such  a  system  may  be  judged  by 
his  own  words: 

*'When  we  consider  life  at  all  reflectively, 
we  come  upon  two  facts.  First,  we  have 
thoughts  and  feelings  and  volitions;  and 
these  are  our  own.  We  also  have  a  measure 
of  self-control,  or  the  power  of  self -direction. 
Here,  then,  in  experience  we  find  a  certain 
selfhood  and  a  relative  independence.  This 
fact  constitutes  us  real  persons,  or,  rather, 
it  is  the  meaning  of  our  personality.  The 
second  fact  is  that  we  cannot  regard  this 
life  as  self-sufficient  and  independent.  How 
the  life  is  possible  we  do  not  know;  we  only 
know  that  it  is.  How  the  two  facts  are  put 
together  is  altogether  beyond  us.  We  only 
know  that  we  cannot  interpret  life  without 
admitting  both,  and  that  to  deny  either 
lands  us  in  contradiction  and  nonsense.  It 
is  no  doubt  fine,  and  in  some  sense  it  is 
correct,  to  say  that  God  is  in  all  things; 
but  when  it  comes  to  saying  that  God  is  all 
things,  and  that  all  forms  of  thought  and 
feeling  and  conduct  are  his,  then  reason 
136 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

simply  commits  suicide.  God  thinks  and 
feels  in  what  we  call  our  thinking  and  feel- 
ing; and  hence  he  blunders  in  our  blunder- 
ing and  is  stupid  in  our  stupidity.  He 
contradicts  himself  also  with  the  utmost 
freedom;  for  a  deal  of  his  thinking  does  not 
hang  together  from  one  person  to  another, 
or  from  one  day  to  another  in  the  same 
person.  Error,  folly,  and  sin  are  all  made 
divine;  and  reason  and  conscience  as  having 
authority  vanish.  The  only  thing  that  is 
not  divine  in  this  scheme  is  God;  and  he 
vanishes  into  a  congeries  of  contradictions 
and  basenesses."^ 

The  Ideal  Nature  of  Time  and  Space 

Next  to  his  doctrine  of  a  Supreme  Intel- 
ligence as  the  World-Ground,  Bowne  is  most 
likely  to  be  denied  standing  as  a  Prag- 
matist  because  of  his  position  regarding  the 
ideal  nature  of  time  and  space.  Pragma- 
tism of  the  James  type  is  very  prone  to  fly 
at  anything  which  bears  the  suggestion  of 
idealism.  Such  pragmatism  approaches  the 
problems   from   a   realistic   if   not  from   a 

^  Bowne,  Metaphysics,  p.  102. 

137 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

materialistic  standpoint.  Nevertheless,  the 
question  of  the  nature  of  time  and  space  is 
a  momentous  one  for  the  cause  of  pluralistic 
pragmatism.  We  have  already  seen,  with 
Mr.  James,  how  purely  objective  is  their 
explanation.  Space  is  a  sort  of  entity  exist- 
ing for  itself,  and  time  is  of  similar  nature, 
to  be  spoken  of  as  if  it  possessed  extension. 
Mr.  James  seems  to  indicate  that  we  are 
sure  of  the  events  of  history  because  time 
as  an  enduring  entity  pokes  itself  somewhat 
like  a  pole  into  the  present.  Seeing  one  end, 
the  present,  we  can  be  sure  there  is  another 
end,  though  out  of  sight.  It  is  not  surprising 
that  the  pragmatists  are  unwilling  to  sur- 
render space  and  time  to  idealism,  for  on 
these  two  hang  all  the  unity  that  is  left 
them,  and  by  their  own  confession  some 
unity  is  necessary  even  to  a  pluralistic 
universe. 

But  to  consider  the  question  of  history, 
what  is  there  in  my  present  that  reminds 
me  of  the  historic  character,  Julius  Csesar, 
or  compels  me  to  believe  that  any  such 
person  ever  lived  .^  What  realistic  way  is 
there  of  being  sure  that  he  existed  in  his 
138 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

time  as  I  in  mine?  To  arrive  at  such  a 
conclusion  I  must  rationalize  and  relate,  and 
this  is  strictly  forbidden  by  the  pragmatic 
doctrine.  Indeed,  I  can  have  no  idea  of 
the  time  that  has  elapsed  since  Caesar's  day, 
being  myself  confined  to  my  threescore 
years  and  ten.  But  I  relate  events  to  my 
own  personality  in  time,  and  by  imagina- 
tion I  relate  other  events  and  other  days  of 
which  I  am  told,  in  some  sort  of  consistent 
order  to  that  time  into  which  my  own  life 
falls.  By  the  same  token  I  am  able  to  relate 
my  present  time  to  a  fancied  order  yet  to 
come,  and  obtain  a  belief  in  it  only  second 
to  that  which  obtains  concerning  that  which 
is  told  me  as  liistory. 

Without  a  unitary  personality  the  fleeting 
facts  and  changes  of  our  human  life  could 
not  be  related.  To-day  would  have  no  in- 
telligible relation  to  yesterday,  only  that  an 
abiding  personality  superior  to  the  events, 
possessing  a  certain  timelessness,  relates 
them  to  itself.  Likewise  can  we  think  of 
the  events  of  history  only  as  they  might  be 
the  related  experiences  of  a  unitary  being 
itself  above  their  flux  and  change. 
139 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

The  Pragmatic  Test  for  Religious 
Values 

James,  speaking  of  the  pragmatic  test  as 
applied  to  religion,  says:  "If  theological 
ideas  prove  to  have  a  concrete  value  for 
life,  they  will  be  true,  for  pragmatism,  in 
the  sense  of  being  good  for  so  much.  For 
how  much  more  they  are  true  will  depend 
entirely  on  their  relations  to  the  other 
truths  that  also  have  to  be  acknowledged. 
.  .  .  The  true  is  the  name  of  whatever 
proves  itself  to  be  good  in  the  way  of  belief, 
and  good  too  for  definite  assignable  rea- 
sons."^ Permission  to  exist  in  the  prag- 
matic scheme  is  of  little  value  to  religion, 
however,  in  a  many  sundered  world.  With- 
out a  fundamental  intelligence,  capable  also 
of  moral  qualities,  with  a  care  for  moral  law 
binding  on  all  moral  creatures,  one's  theo- 
logical beliefs — indeed,  one's  ideal  of  the 
good — becomes  momentary  and  individual. 
The  belief  which  is  found  to  be  true  for  one 
man  will  be  found  equally  false  for  another. 
There  could  be  under  such  a  system  no 
common  moral  imperative  to  receive  the 

8  Pragmatism,  pp.  73,  76. 

140 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

sanction  of  all  moral  beings.  Yet  this  is 
one  of  the  common  experiences  in  life. 

Bowne  applied  the  pragmatic  test  to  re- 
ligion, but  from  a  very  different  standpoint. 
Affirming  a  moral  governor  of  the  world, 
he  yet  held  that  the  test  of  theological 
opinion,  of  so-called  religious  experience, 
must  ever  lie  in  actual  life.  "How  does  it 
work  in  life?"  was  a  question  proper  to  any 
religious  belief  whatever.  By  the  practical 
answer  must  the  theory  stand  or  fall. 

On  the  other  hand,  those  beliefs  that  have 
been  found  contributing  toward  a  higher 
civilization,  a  nobler  moral  order,  a  clearer 
conception  of  duty  and  the  greatest  good 
to  the  race,  carry  with  them  their  own  cre- 
dentials, which  cannot  be  speculatively 
overthrown. 


141 


SECTION  IV 

BOWNE   AND   SOME   PRESENT-DAY 
THINKERS 


CHAPTER  X 

BERGSON,  THE  ABSTRACTIONS  OF 
AN  IMPERSONAL  PHILOSOPHY 

Can  Knowledge  and  Life  Be  Brought 
Together  on  the  Empirical  Basis? 

Bergson  approaches  the  problems  of  phi- 
losophy from  the  standpoint  of  empiricism. 
He  denies  the  conclusions  of  idealism  and 
at  the  same  time  opposes  the  claims  of 
materialism.  He  says:  "We  maintain  as 
against  materialism,  that  perception  over- 
flows infinitely  the  cerebral  state;  but  we 
have  endeavored  to  establish  as  against 
idealism,  that  matter  goes  in  every  direc- 
tion beyond  our  representation  of  it,  a 
representation  which  the  mind  has  gathered 
out  of  it,  so  to  speak,  by  an  intelligent 
choice.  Of  these  two  opposite  doctrines, 
the  one  attributes  to  the  body  and  the  other 
to  the  intellect  a  true  power  of  creation,  the 
first  insisting  that  our  brain  begets  represen- 
145 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

tation  and  the  second  that  our  understand- 
ing designs  the  plan  of  nature.  And  against 
these  two  doctrines  we  invoke  the  same  tes- 
timony, that  of  consciousness,  which  shows 
us  our  body  as  one  image  among  others  and 
our  understanding  as  a  certain  faculty  of 
dissociating,  of  distinguishing,  of  opposing 
logically,  but  not  of  creating  or  of  con- 
structing."^ 

He  states  the  problem  of  philosophy  to 
be  the  bringing  together  of  the  sundered 
sides  of  consciousness,  matter  and  mind, 
life  and  knowledge,  and  discloses  the  fatal 
flaw  in  the  Spencerian  system:  "It  is 
necessary  that  these  two  inquiries,  theory 
of  knowledge  and  theory  of  life,  should 
join  each  other.  .  .  .  Together  they  may 
solve  by  a  method  more  sure,  brought 
nearer  to  experience,  the  great  problems 
that  philosophy  poses.  For  if  they  should 
succeed  in  their  common  enterprise,  they 
would  show  us  the  formation  of  the  intel- 
lect, and  thereby  the  genesis  of  that  matter 
of  which  our  intellect  traces  the  general 
configuration.    They  would  dig  to  the  very 

1  Matter  and  Memory,  p.  236. 

146 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

root  of  nature  and  of  mind.  They  would 
substitute  for  the  false  evolutionism  of 
Spencer — which  consists  of  cutting  up  pres- 
ent reality  already  evolved,  into  little  bits 
no  less  evolved,  and  then  recomposing  it 
with  these  fragments,  thus  positing  in  ad- 
vance everything  that  is  to  be  explained — 
a  true  evolutionism,  in  which  reality  would 
be  followed  in  its  generation  and  its 
growth."^ 

Of  being,  Bergson  says,  *'Being,  in  our- 
selves, is  becoming,  progress  and  growth."^ 
Being  is,  then,  a  part  of  the  act  of  con- 
sciousness, matter  and  mind  conjoined  in 
perception.  The  consciousness,  freighted 
with  all  its  past,  comes  to  the  act  of  per- 
ception in  the  present.  This  activity,  the 
consonance  of  being  and  knowing,  is  the 
very  essence  of  reality. 

What  Bergson  is  seeking  after  is  some- 
thing more  than  mechanical  causation  that 
would  make  thought  the  mere  product  of 
material  forces,  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
he  seeks  to  establish  a  world  which  shall 


'^  Creative  Evolution,  p.  xiii,  f. 

2  Sc.  Le  Roy,  Philosophy  of  Bergson,  p.  38. 

147 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

not  be  dependent  on  the  individual  judg- 
ment. A  world  of  mechanical  causation  is 
a  closed  system  and  negates  the  reality  of 
knowledge.  A  world  which  must  search  for 
its  reality  in  a  Divine  Idea  alone  takes 
away  all  possibility  of  novelty  or  unique- 
ness. Bergson  sees  that  there  is  a  factor  of 
which  neither  side  has  taken  account,  the 
factor  of  novelty,  without  which  there  can 
be  no  progress  or  evolution.  This  factor  he 
introduces  under  the  name  of  "vital  im- 
pulse," which  he  makes  the  seat  of  reality. 
Does  he,  then,  reach  the  goal  for  which  he 
has  striven — the  unity  of  mind  and  matter, 
of  knowledge  and  life?  He  has  if  we  are  to 
accept  his  word  as  the  final  authority  in  the 
matter.  But  his  position  contains  certain 
important  implications  that  vitiate  the 
system. 

Time  as  Duration 

To  escape  the  Spencerian  snare  of  me- 
chanical explanation,  Bergson  gives  to  the 
idea  of  time  as  duration  the  leading  role 
in  his  philosophy.  Instead  of  time  being, 
on  the  one  hand,  an  external  reality  upon 
148 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

which  are  strung  successive  experiences,  or, 
on  the  other,  a  relating  of  experiences  by  an 
abiding  personahty  as  with  Bowne,  Bergson 
takes  a  position  less  clear,  that  the  indi- 
vidual contains  within  himself  the  past  at 
any  moment.  Duration  is  not  a  mere  suc- 
cession of  appearances,  but  hitnself,  his  in- 
dividuality. His  stock  illustration  of  this 
is  the  rolling  snowball:  "My  mental  state," 
he  says,  "as  it  advances  on  the  road  of 
time,  is  continually  swelling  with  the  dura- 
tion which  it  accumulates;  it  goes  on  in- 
creasing— rolling  upon  itself,  as  a  snowball 
on  the  snow."^  "The  past  follows  us  at 
every  instant;  all  that  we  have  thought, 
felt,  and  willed  from  our  earliest  infancy 
is  there,  leaning  over  the  present  which  is 
about  to  join  it,  pressing  against  the  portals 
of  consciousness  that  would  fain  leave  it 
outside.  .  .  .  What  are  we,  in  fact,  what  is 
our  character,  if  not  the  condensation  of  the 
history  we  have  lived  from  our  birth — nay, 
even  before  our  birth,  since  we  bring  with 
us  prenatal  dispositions."^ 

*  Creative  Evolution,  p.  2. 
^  Creative  Evolution,  pp.  4,  5. 

149 


PERSON ALISM  AND  THE 

To  understand  the  implication  of  this 
doctrine  it  is  necessary  to  pause  and  ask 
ourselves  a  few  pertinent  questions. 
Granted  that  time  is  but  a  bastard  space, 
and  is  nothing  apart  from  experience.  Is 
it  not  something  apart  from  my  individual 
experience.^  Granted  that  I  derive  my 
sense  of  duration  from  my  own  past  states. 
What  gives  me  power  to  go  beyond  my 
individual  experience.^  If  time  is  nothing 
apart  from  individual  experiences,  how  can 
any  two  of  us  come  by  the  same  calendar? 
Why  does  my  time  coincide  with  yours  .'^ 
Why  is  my  sense  of  time  greater,  the  fewer 
the  experiences  that  fill  my  day,  and 
shorter,  the  more  multiplied  these  ex- 
periences.'^ If  this  duration  is  myself  and 
at  the  same  time  a  consciousness,  why  is 
it  that  all  memories  are  not  with  me  at  the 
same  moment,  and  all  are  not  equally  at  my 
command?  How  does  attention  come  in  to 
fix  some  events  indelibly  in  my  mind  while 
I  may  deliberately  choose  to  reject  others? 
Is  not  this  power  of  choice,  this  principle  of 
freedom,  something  apart  from  the  mere 
consciousness,  possessing  in  itself  the  power 
150 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

of  direction?  How,  having  never  ex- 
perienced it  in  consciousness,  can  I  exer- 
cise the  historical  sense? 

To  avoid  the  deadlock  raised  by  such 
questions  as  these,  we  are  told  of  racial 
memories  passed  along  from  generation  to 
generation.  Much  language  is  used  to  de- 
scribe an  imaginary  stream  or  current  of 
life.  We  have  been  warned  to  beware  of 
abstraction  in  speaking  of  life,  but  now  it 
seems  expedient  to  say:  "At  a  certain  mo- 
ment, at  certain  points  in  space,  a  visible 
current  has  taken  rise;  this  current  of  life, 
traversing  the  bodies  it  has  organized  one 
after  another,  passing  from  generation  to 
generation,  has  become  divided  amongst  spe- 
cies and  distributed  amongst  individuals 
without  losing  anything  of  its  force.  "^  Thus 
have  we  fallen  into  that  very  fallacy  of 
abstraction  against  which  Bergson  had 
warned  us. 

If  there  is  a  racial  memory  which  flows 
along  with  and  is  a  part  of  this  current  of 
life,  just  what  is  it,  speaking  concretely? 
It  remains  to  be  proved  that  we  can  inherit 

*  Creative  Evolution,  p.  26. 

151 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

the  intellectual  ideas  of  our  ancestors. 
More's  the  pity  for  many  of  us.  But  it 
seems  reasonable  to  say  that  there  can  be 
no  experience  apart  from  an  experiencing 
intelligence.  How,  then,  can  the  expe- 
riences of  my  own  immediate  ancestors, 
not  to  mention  those  of  my  cousins  and  my 
aunts,  become  the  property  of  my  con- 
sciousness until  they  are  grasped  through 
an  effort  of  my  intelligence.'^  Here  it  is 
evident  our  progress  was  only  verbal. 

Further:  if  time  is  duration,  we  must 
ask,  "For  whom?"  Events  can  be  gathered 
up  and  related  only  by  a  consciousness 
which  not  only  endures,  but  is  also  a  self- 
relating  personality.  This  personality  can 
relate  itself  to  events  outside  of  its  ex- 
perience only  as  they  and  it  jBnd  relation 
through  a  higher,  self-relating  Personality, 
which  is  not  fragmentary,  but  which  knows 
all. 

The  '*Vital  Impulse"  Assumed  for  the 
Sake  of  Freedom 

To  free  the  individual  from  becoming  a 
mere  mechanism  whose  present  is  the  pro- 
152 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

duct  of  past  states,  and  to  give  place  to 
initiative,  Bergson  introduces  the  factor 
which  he  calls  the  "vital  impulse."  He 
says:  "The  role  of  life  is  to  insert  some 
indetermination  into  matter.  Indetermi- 
nate, i.  e.,  unforeseeable,  are  the  forias  it 
creates  in  the  course  of  its  evolution."^  It 
is  the  "vital  impulse"  which  gives  rise  to 
new  possibilities.  It  is  the  source  and  ex- 
planation of  evolution.  Instead  of  a  closed 
mechanical  universe,  we  have  one  in  which 
any  miracle  may  occur.  While  avoiding  a 
universe  of  mechanism  on  the  one  hand, 
and  a  fore-ordered  w^orld  on  the  other,  he 
seems  to  choose  a  world  in  which  God  him- 
self cannot  know  what  is  going  to  happen. 

It  is  difficult  to  see  how  in  such  a  scheme 
it  is  possible  to  preserve  any  order  of 
nature  whatever.  All  purpose,  order,  or  pre- 
dictableness  is  especially  horrifying  as  im- 
plying a  closed  system  and  an  absence  of 
freedom.  The  "vital  impulse"  raised  to  the 
power  of  a  self-directive  intelligent  person- 
ality would  give  ground,  not  only  for 
freedom,   but  also  for  the  usual  order  of 

^  Creative  Evolution,  p.  126. 

153 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

phenomena.  The  very  order  of  occurrence 
would  be  based  upon  such  a  Supreme  Will. 
By  gaining  freedom  without  such  a  Per- 
sonality Bergson  undoes  the  possibility  of 
a  unitary  world  of  relations.  This  con- 
clusion has  been  very  well  brought  out  by 
the  criticism  of  a  well-known  writer:  "If 
for  the  magic  power  of  types  invoked  by 
Aristotle  we  substituted,  with  M.  Bergson, 
the  magic  power  of  the  ^elan  vital,"  that  is, 
of  evolution  in  general,  we  should  be  re- 
ferring events  not  to  finer,  more  familiar, 
more  pervasive  processes,  but  to  one  all- 
embracing  process,  unique  and  always  in- 
complete. Our  understanding  would  end 
in  something  far  vaguer  and  looser  than 
what  our  observation  began  with.  Aris- 
totle at  least  could  refer  particulars  to  their 
specific  types,  as  medicine  and  social  science 
are  still  glad  enough  to  do,  to  help  them  in 
guessing  and  in  making  a  learned  show  be- 
fore the  public.  But  if  divination  and 
eloquence — for  science  is  out  of  the  ques- 
tion— were  to  invoke  nothing  but  a  fluid 
tendency  to  grow,  we  should  be  left  with  a 
flat  history  of  phenomena  and  no  means  of 
154 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

prediction  or  even  classification.  All  knowl- 
edge would  be  reduced  to  gossip,  infinitely 
diffuse,  perhaps  enlisting  our  dramatic  feel- 
ings, but  yielding  no  intellectual  mastery  of 
experience,  no  practical  competence,  and  no 
moral  lesson.  The  world  would  be  a  serial 
novel,  to  be  continued  forever,  and  all  men 
mere  novel  readers."^ 

A  Harmony  Due  to  Identity  of 
Impulsion 

Having  rejected  both  radical  mechanism 
and  radical  finalism,  Bergson  attributes 
those  harmonies  in  nature  that  have  fur- 
nished materials  for  the  teleological  argument 
of  theology  to  an  identity  of  impulsion 
rather  than  to  an  aspiration  after  any 
future  goal  existent  in  the  mind  of  a 
Creator.  He  says:  "If  the  evolution  of  life 
is  something  other  than  a  series  of  adapta- 
tions to  accidental  circumstances,  so  also  it 
is  not  the  realization  of  a  plan.  A  plan  is 
given  in  advance.  It  is  represented,  or  at 
least  represen table,  before  its  realization."^ 


*  Santayana,  Winds  of  Doctrine,  p,  68. 

*  Creative  Evolution,  p.  52. 

155 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

Such  harmony,  he  conchides,  would  be  won 
only  at  the  expense  of  freedom.  *'If,  on  the 
contrary,  the  unity  of  life  is  to  be  found 
solely  in  the  impetus  that  pushes  it  along 
the  road  of  time,  the  harmony  is  not  in 
front,  but  behind."^" 

At  this  point  we  ought  to  stop  and  take 
inventory  of  our  ideas  to  be  saved  from 
being  swept  along  on  the  wave  of  undefined 
terms.  What  do  we  mean  by  unity  of  life.'^ 
Is  the  "impetus"  something  that  survives 
the  passage  of  time  and  events.  If  there  is 
to  be  a  continuity  in  an  impetus,  something 
must  keep  its  identity.  Just  what  would 
the  identity  of  a  changing  impetus  be.^^  We 
cannot  have  identity  without  something  to 
be  identical.  To  have  consciousness  of 
change  there  must  be  an  abiding  element 
that  survives  change.  Personality  is  the 
only  reality  in  life  which  we  can  actually 
posit  as  causing  or  experiencing  change  and 
yet  itself  maintaining  its  identity.  Is  the 
"vital  impulse,"  then,  an  unchanging  per- 
sonality? If  it  is  not  (and  we  are  given  no 
such  clue  to  its  nature),  then  all  must  have 

1"  Creative  Evolution,  p.  103. 

156 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

been  set  going  in  some  past  time.  In  that 
case  we  have  not  escaped  from  the  closed 
system  Bergson  seeks  to  avoid,  but  have, 
rather,  fallen  back  into  the  pit.  If  it  is  not 
a  personality,  and  yet  acts  in  the  present  in 
lives  so  diverse  as  Mr.  Bergson's  and  mine, 
of  what  does  the  unity  consist.'^ 

Out  of  this  positing  of  the  "vital  im- 
petus" grows  Bergson's  definition  of  God: 
"God  has  nothing  of  the  already  made;  he 
is  unceasing  life,  action,  freedom.  Creation, 
so  conceived,  is  not  a  mystery;  we  expe- 
rience it  ourselves  when  we  act  freely."^^ 

By  this  definition  he  hopes  to  escape  the 
dilemma  just  mentioned.  This  is  because 
he  senses  the  fact  that  his  problem  cannot  be 
met  on  the  impersonal  plane.  It  remains  to 
inquire  if  the  God  of  his  definition  is  suffi- 
cient for  the  need.  To  provide  the  necessary 
impetus  we  have  a  growing,  changing,  be- 
coming God.  The  question  at  once  arises 
as  to  how  a  becoming  God,  who  is  himself 
a  part  of  the  general  movement,  could,  with 
a  constantly  changing  mind,  outlook,  and 
purpose,  furnish  an  identity  of  impulsion. 

"  Creative  Evolution,  pp.  104,  105. 

157 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

Where  are  we  to  find  the  looked-for  har- 
mony? Will  the  harmony  be  for  this  day, 
this  hour,  or  this  minute?  It  includes  all? 
Then  we  cannot  avoid  pantheism,  and 
every  kind  of  impulse,  criminal  and  saintly, 
the  strange  gamut  of  human  heroism  and 
beastliness,  are  a  part  of  God  and  issue 
from  the  "vital  impetus."  We  have  crawled 
in  by  the  cellar  window  to  find  ourselves 
once  more  in  the  pent-up  quarters  of  Abso- 
lutism, out  of  the  front  door  of  which  we 
recently  marched  with  drums  beating  and 
banners  flaunting.  What  Eucken  says  of 
the  spiritual  life  is  here  equally  applicable 
to  the  thought  of  a  becoming  God:  "Spirit- 
ual life  must  never  be  understood  as  an 
entire  Becoming — as  a  mere  Process — for,  if 
this  were  the  case.  Truth  would  become  the 
mere  slave  of  its  age;  and  such  a  state  of 
things  would  mean  an  inner  destruction  of 
Truth. "^2  In  the  same  way  a  becoming 
God  falls  prey  to  his  own  creation,  is  no 
God. 

But  Bergson's  object  in  positing  a  God  is 
to  provide  a  ground  of  duration  which  shall 

12  Eucken,  Knowledge  and  Life,  p.  228. 

158 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

include  all  human  experiences  of  duration. 
We  have  already  noted  the  timeless  element 
necessary  to  all  consciousness  of  change.  If 
we  are  to  have  a  God  who  will  be  a  real 
Ground,  he  must  himself  be  more  than  a 
creation  of  time,  else  there  is  nothing  in  the 
thought  of  duration  as  Bergson  employs  the 
term.  But  we  cannot  admit  the  assump- 
tion of  a  God  not  a  creation  of  time  without 
being  led  far  afield  from  Bergson's  stand- 
point. Bowne  has  well  expressed  the  rela- 
tion of  the  Supreme  Being  to  time  in  his 
discussion  of  the  Kantian  philosophy: 

"The  bringing  of  the  present  with  the 
resultant  time  judgment  into  relation  to 
activity  greatly  modifies  the  subject.  We 
call  those  things  present  which  we  possess 
in  the  certain  immediacy  of  consciousness, 
and  if  we  possessed  all  our  experiences  in  a 
similar  immediacy,  the  whole  experience 
would  be  present  in  the  same  sense.  There 
would  still  be  a  certain  order  of  arrangement 
among  the  factors  of  experience  which  could 
not  arbitrarily  be  modified,  but  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  series  would  be  equally  present 
to  the  consciousness.  If,  now,  there  were  a 
159 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

being  who  could  retain  all  the  facts  of  his 
experience  in  the  same  immediacy,  he  would 
have  no  past.  And,  further,  if  such  a  being 
were  in  full  possession  of  himself,  so  as  to  be 
under  no  law  of  development  and  possessing 
no  unrealized  potentialities,  he  would  also 
have  no  future,  at  least  so  far  as  his  own 
existence  might  be  concerned.  His  present 
world  would  be  all-embracing,  and  his  now 
would  be  eternal.  These  considerations 
modify  our  judgment  of  the  subjectivity  of 
time  very  profoundly.  Taking  up  once 
more  the  question,  Are  we  in  time.^  we  see 
that  it  has  several  meanings  and  the  an- 
swers must  vary  to  correspond.  If  it  means, 
Are  things  and  events  in  a  real  time  which 
flows  on  independently  of  them.f'  the  answer 
must  be,  No.  If  it  means,  Does  our  ex- 
perience have  the  temporal  form.'^  the  an- 
swer must  be.  Yes.  If  we  further  inquire 
about  the  possibility  of  transcending  tem- 
poral limitations,  it  is  clear  that  this  can  be 
affirmed  only  of  the  Absolute  Being,  for 
only  in  him  do  we  find  that  complete  self- 
possession  which  the  transcendence  of  time 
would  mean.  Nontemporality,  then,  in  the 
160 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

concrete  sense  cannot  be  reached  by  passing 
behind  the  world  of  phenomena  into  the 
world  of  noumena,  but,  rather,  and  only  by 
rising  above  the  sphere  of  the  finite  into  the 
absolute  self-possession  of  the  infinite.  "^^ 

Bergson  lacks  what  Bowne  had  so  clearly, 
a  Personal  World-Ground,  himself  the  un- 
changing Cause  of  change.  Bergson  leaves 
out  of  reckoning  that  purpose  which  makes 
humanity  great.  For  man  is  indeed  great  in 
the  universe  and  the  lord  of  all  only  as  be- 
hind his  little  and  short-sighted  purpose  lies 
a  deeper  Purpose  which  is  also  a  Person. 

In  this  connection  my  attention  has  been 
called  to  a  letter  written  by  Mr.  Bergson  to 
Father  Joseph  de  Tonquedec,  S.  J.,  and 
quoted  in  a  recent  review  of  Bergson's 
philosophy  :^^ 

"I  speak  of  God  (pp.  268-272  of  L'Evo- 
lution  Creatrice)  as  of  the  source  whence 
issue  successively,  by  an  effect  of  his  free- 
dom, the  'currents'  or  'impulses'  each  of 
which  will  make  a  world;  he  therefore,  re- 


1^  Bowne,  Kant  and  Spencer,  pp.  158,  159. 
"  Ruhe  and  Paul,  Henri  Bergson,  an  Account  of  his  Life 
and_PhiIosophy,  p.  42. 

161 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

mains  distinct  from  them,  and  it  is  not  of 
him  that  we  can  say  that  'most  often  it  turns 
aside'  or  it  is  'at  the  mercy  of  the  materiahty 
that  it  has  been  bound  to  adopt.' "... 
Again  he  is  quoted  as  saying:  "From  all 
this  emerges  clearly  the  idea  of  a  God, 
Creator  and  free,  the  generator  of  both 
matter  and  life,  whose  work  of  creation  is 
continued  on  the  side  of  life  by  the  evolu- 
tion of  species  and  the  building  up  of  human 
personalities.  From  all  this  emerges,  conse- 
quently, a  refutation  of  monism  and  of 
pantheism  in  general. "^^ 

The  reply  to  this  is  that  if  Mr.  Bergson 
wishes  to  hold  to  this  conception  of  God,  he 
must  modify  his  system.  He  here  assumes 
that  God  is  made  free  by  fiat.  This  state- 
ment does  not  remove  the  yoke  of  necessity 
which  must  ever  hang  about  the  neck  of  a 
Being  whose  mind,  thought,  and  moral 
character  are  in  process  of  becoming — that 
is,  who  is  himself  a  creature  of  time.  It  is 
not  enough  to  affirm  that  God  always  ex- 
isted. We  must  go  still  further  and  ask 
what  he  was  at  first.    In  the  case  of  a  be- 

^  Ibid.,  p.  44. 

162 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

coming  God  he  may  not  have  been  God  in 
the  beginning.  He  may  have  grown  to 
that  estate.  Mental  and  moral  perfection 
and  timelessness,  in  other  words,  are  neces- 
sary to  our  thought  of  God.  A  lesser  Being 
may  be  a  blind  demiurge,  but  possessing  no 
personality,  becomes  inevitably  the  victim 
of  his  own  world.  If  Mr.  Bergson  wishes  to 
avoid  a  pantheistic  God,  it  devolves  upon 
him  to  modify  his  philosophy,  and  to  so 
clear  his  definitions  that  a  pantheistic  God 
will  not  be  implied. 

His  Doctrine  of  Knowledge 

We  must  not  leave  this  brief  review  of 
Bergson's  system  without  looking  at  his 
doctrine  of  intelligence  and  intuition  as 
contrasting  forms  of  knowledge.  He  sug- 
gests that  intuition  really  gets  nearer  to 
life,  while  intellect  is,  by  the  nature  of  the 
mind,  bound  to  the  rigors  of  geometrical  ex- 
planation. The  knowledge  gained  by  in- 
tuition is,  however,  intensive,  and  applicable 
only  in  a  realm  of  limited  life.  But  intelli- 
gence is  able  to  transcend  itself:  "There  are 
things  that  intelligence  alone  is  able  to 
163 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

seek,  but  which,  by  itself,  it  will  never  find. 
These  things  instinct  alone  could  find;  but 
it  will  never  seek  them."^® 

Intuition  leads  us  to  the  very  inwardness 
of  life.  Intelligence,  however,  had  the  abil- 
ity to  turn  inward  on  itself  and  to  "awaken 
the  potentialities  of  intuition  which  slumber 
within  it."^^  Intuition  "is  a  lamp  almost 
extinguished,  which  only  glimmers  now  and 
then,  for  a  few  moments  at  most.  But  it 
glimmers  wherever  a  vital  interest  is  at 
stake.  On  our  personality,  on  our  liberty, 
on  the  place  we  occupy  in  the  whole  of 
nature,  on  our  origin,  and  perhaps  also  on 
cur  destiny,  it  throws  a  light  feeble  and 
vacillating,  but  none  the  less  pierces  the 
darkness  of  the  night  in  which  the  intellect 
leaves  us.  .  .  .  Philosophy  introduces  us 
thus  into  the  spiritual  life.  And  it  shows 
us  at  the  same  time  the  relation  of  the  life 
of  the  spirit  to  that  of  the  body.  ...  A 
philosophy  of  intuition  will  be  a  negation  of 
science,  will  be  sooner  or  later  swept  away 
by  science,  if  it  does  not  resolve  to  see  the 

'^  Creative  Evolution,  p.  151. 
"  Ibid.,  p.  182. 

164 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

life  of  the  body  just  where  it  really  is,  on 
the  road  that  leads  to  the  life  of  the  spirit. 
But  it  will  then  no  longer  have  to  do  with 
definite  living  beings.  Life  as  a  whole 
from  the  initial  impulsion  that  thrust  it 
into  the  world  will  appear  as  a  wave  which 
rises,  and  which  is  opposed  by  the  de- 
scending movement  of  matter.  On  the 
greater  part  of  its  surface,  at  different 
heights,  the  current  is  converted  by  matter 
into  a  vortex.  At  one  point  alone  it  passes 
freely,  dragging  with  it  the  obstacle  which 
will  weigh  on  its  progress,  but  will  not  stop 
it.  At  this  point  is  humanity;  it  is  our 
privileged  situation.  On  the  other  hand, 
this  rising  wave  is  consciousness,  and,  like 
all  consciousness,  it  includes  potentialities 
without  number  which  interpenetrate  and  to 
which  consequently  neither  the  category  of 
unity  nor  that  of  multiplicity  is  appropriate, 
made  as  they  both  are  for  inert  matter. 
The  matter  that  it  bears  along  with  it  and 
in  the  interstices  of  which  it  inserts  itself, 
alone  can  divide  it  into  distinct  individuali- 
ties. On  flows  the  current,  running  through 
human  generations,  subdividing  itself  into 
165 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

individuals.  This  subdivision  was  vaguely 
indicated  in  it,  but  could  not  have  been 
made  clear  without  matter.  Thus  souls  are 
continually  being  created,  which  neverthe- 
less, in  a  certain  sense,  preexisted.  .  .  .  All 
the  living  hold  together,  and  all  yield  to  the 
same  tremendous  push.  The  animal  takes 
its  stand  on  the  plant,  man  bestrides  ani- 
mality,  and  the  whole  of  humanity,  in  space 
and  in  time,  is  one  immense  army  galloping 
beside  and  before  and  behind  each  of  us  in 
an  overwhelming  charge  able  to  beat  down 
every  resistance  and  clear  the  most  formid- 
able obstacles,  perhaps  even  death."^^ 

It  seems  a  pity  to  disturb  the  grandeur  of 
words  that  for  abstraction  would  do  credit 
to  the  absolute  philosophy  itself.  Out  of  the 
mazes  two  pertinent  questions  arise.  The 
first  has  respect  to  the  intuitive  nature  of 
religion  and  its  contrast  with  anything  in- 
tellectual. If  intuitive  knowledge  is  closer 
to  life,  and  religion  is  grasped  by  intuition 
alone,  why  does  not  the  savage  possess  the 
highest  form  of  religion  .^^  To  ask  this  ques- 
tion is  to  perceive  its  answer.     To  follow 

"  Creative  Evolution,  pp.  269-271. 

166 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

reason  in  religion  instead  of  blind  impulse 
is  to  be  moral  and  to  attain  the  highest 
reaches  of  character.  Religion  without  the 
intellectual  content  has  ever  proved  un- 
worthy and  inadequate.  Furthermore,  if  we 
are  to  posit  any  reality  in  "the  life  of  the 
spirit,"  we  must  provide  some  ground  for  it 
in  the  "vital  impulse"  with  its  essence  of 
Becoming.  If  we  do  this,  we  shall  have  a 
God  who  is  only  growing  from  wickedness 
to  righteousness,  and  we  obtain  a  reversal 
of  moral  standards  and  responsibilities. 

The  second  question  arises  out  of  the 
statement  that  the  life  of  the  spirit  will  "no 
longer  have  to  do  with  definite  living  being." 
We  at  once  ask  what  such  a  life  of  the  spirit 
would  mean,  and  what  it  would  amount  to 
if  it  meant  anything.  By  the  definition  it 
could  mean  nothing  for  human  beings;  and 
if  it  meant  anything  to  God  or  to  the  "vital 
impulse,"  we  would  have  no  means  of  ascer- 
taining. All  of  which  goes  to  show  that  we 
have  been  regaled  with  a  form  of  words  and 
a  sound  of  wisdom. 

That  Bergson  has  done  a  real  service  to 
philosophy  by  calling  attention  to  intelli- 
167 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

gence  and  intuition  as  contrasting  forms  of 
knowledge  cannot  be  gainsaid.  The  idea  is 
vast  in  its  possibility  of  explaining  the  ab- 
normalities of  genius,  the  uniqueness  of 
Jesus,  the  authority  of  divine  revelation, 
and  the  possibility  of  revelation  to  those 
who,  untrained  in  the  schools,  are  yet  open 
to  the  deepest  voices  of  our  being.  Berg- 
son's  proclamation  of  the  value  of  the 
common  intuitions,  the  possibility  of  the 
possession  of  the  deepest  insights  by  the 
unlettered,  is  one  of  the  things  that  have 
drawn  to  him  great  popular  attention.  But 
that  his  ideas  lack  the  metaphysical  ground- 
ing that  would  make  them  most  effective 
must  be  admitted.  The  truth  of  this  state- 
ment will  never  be  more  evident  than  upon 
comparison  of  the  abstractions  of  Berg- 
son's  impersonalism  with  the  directness  of 
Bowne's  personalism. 


168 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


CHAPTER  XI 

EUCKEN— THE  RETURN  TO 
SPIRITUAL  VERITY 

So  many  excellent  expositions  and  reviews 
of  the  important  work  of  this  leading  thinker 
of  the  present  time  have  already  appeared  that 
it  is  here  unnecessary  to  do  more  than  touch 
upon  the  few  leading  features  of  his  system 
in  order  to  gather  the  affinity  and  relation- 
ship of  his  thought  with  that  of  Bowne. 

The  two  thinkers  possess  essential  fea- 
tures in  common.  There  was  between  them 
the  warmest  personal  regard  and  mutual 
appreciation.  Their  harmony  was  arrived 
at  quite  independently,  though  both  had 
been  pupils  of  Lotze.  We  are  told  that  the 
young  Eucken  was  not  favorably  impressed 
with  Lotze,  and  after  a  short  time  at  Got- 
tingen  passed  on  to  another  university.  On 
the  other  hand,  Bowne  is  most  often  known 
for  his  likeness  to  his  former  teacher.  The 
similarities  between  Bowne  and  Eucken, 
however,  lie,  rather,  along  the  line  of  the 
169 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

positions  to  which  Bowne  advanced  inde- 
pendently of  Lotze.  The  strength  of  the 
latter  lay,  rather,  in  his  dialectic  and  in  his 
power  of  clear  criticism  than  in  construc- 
tiveness  and  advance. 

Reality  Must  Include  More  Than 
Things,  and  More  Than  Ideas 

Eucken  opposes  the  pretensions  of  the 
naturalistic  school  to  include  the  whole 
world  in  the  experience  of  phenomena, 
which  leads  direct  to  skepticism  and  the 
denial  of  knowledge.  He  also  takes  issue 
with  the  Absolute  Philosophy,  which  would 
confine  all  truth  to  vague  and  shadowy 
ideas.  He  will  not  deny  reality  to  the  ob- 
jective world,  nor  will  he  allow  that  the 
world  of  thought  is  of  itself  complete.  He 
points,  rather,  to  the  value  of  the  ideal  as 
something  toward  which  man  may  bend  his 
energies  in  achievement.  It  is  possible  for 
intellect  to  arrive  at  great  and  inspiring 
ideals,  but  these  find  content  and  value 
only  as  they  are  achieved.  He  points  out 
the  impossibility  of  moral  victory  and  of 
progress  in  history  and  civilization,  if  man 
170 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

is  to  be  left  at  the  dead  level  of  a  phenomenal 
and  disunited  world.  It  is  the  power  of 
intellectual  synthesis  which  enables  man  to 
apprehend  truth  and  then  by  actual  strug- 
gle to  make  the  truth  his  own  in  character. 
In  this  "activism"  Euckcn  would  unite  the 
subjective  and  objective  worlds,  the  clue  to 
whose  relationship  he  finds  in  the  life  of  the 
spirit.  The  spiritual  in  man  is  thus  seen  as 
something  not  so  indefinite  as  to  be  a  mere 
bringer  of  individual  peace  and  comfort,  as 
has  often  been  the  case  with  the  followers 
of  absolutism.  Nothing  is  really  had  apart 
from  struggle  and  the  realization  of  the 
ideal  in  life.  Spiritual  truth,  from  being  a 
wandering  child  of  intellect  or  emotion,  be- 
comes a  fundamental  fact,  the  fundamental 
reality,  for  in  its  outworking  it  is  the  highest 
expression  of  man's  very  being. 

Truth  Must  Have  a  Common  Validity 

Though  insisting  that  ideal  truth  must 
find  its  value  and  verification  in  actual  liv- 
ing, Eucken  would  resent  being  classed  as  a 
pragmatist  according  to  the  type  of  William 
James.  He  saves  his  pragmatic  test  of  the 
171 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

reality  of  the  ideal  from  falling  into  the 
pluralistic  confusion  of  the  latter  by  assert- 
ing the  universal  validity  of  truth.  Truth 
has  an  authoritative  validity  far  above  the 
power  of  individual  thought  or  caprice. 
James'  repugnance  to  all  general  ideas  and 
to  all  absolute  standards  led  him  to  a  view 
of  truth  which  made  it  the  victim  of  the 
individual  notion,  the  individual  himself 
being  the  sole  judge  of  what  is  useful,  good, 
and,  therefore,  true.  No  one  has  shown 
more  clearly  than  Eucken  the  absurdity  and 
worthlessness  of  a  truth  whose  only  norm 
is  its  utility  for  the  individual  on  a  given 
occasion.  To  make  the  truth  thus  the 
prey  of  individual  choices,  of  individual 
standards  of  judgment  and  states  of  civiliza- 
tion, is  to  destroy  its  own  inner  character. 
So  while  bringing  all  ideals  to  the  pragmatic 
test  of  action,  he  would  claim  for  them  a 
validity  outlasting  the  moment  of  realiza- 
tion by  a  single  individual.  The  great  norms 
of  truth  lift  themselves  up  like  mountains 
in  the  moral  consciousness  of  men  as  some- 
thing worthy  to  be  achieved,  and  will  ever 
so  lift  themselves,  independent  of  the  moral 

172 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

failure  to  achieve,  either  on  the  part  of  any 
one  man,  or  of  any  class  of  men,  or  of  an 
epoch  or  an  age.  Thus  Eucken  assumes 
theism  as  the  very  ground  of  truth. 

"We  look  at  nature  very  differently  from 
our  forefathers.  It  no  longer  seems  to  us  a 
realm  of  soulful  harmony  and  blessed  peace, 
but,  rather,  a  complex  riddle,  the  arena  on 
which  a  perpetual  struggle  for  existence  is 
being  enacted.  Men  too,  in  the  wild  vortex 
of  political  and  social  struggles,  lose  the 
romantic  glory  of  former  days ;  and  even  the 
exaltation  of  personality  so  usual  to-day,  of 
its  grandeur,  dignity,  and  so  on — unless 
grounded  on  something  greater  and  deeper 
— becomes  merely  a  hollow  and  irrelevant 
phrase,  especially  in  an  age  which  so  forces 
upon  our  notice  the  smallness  and  self- 
seeking  of  man.  As  things  stand  the  only 
choice  is  between  theism  and  atheism."^ 

Eucken's  Personal  Idealism,  the  Reali- 
zation OF  THE  Life  of  the  Spirit 

It  will  be  readily  seen  that  Eucken's  in- 
terests lie  naturally  with  idealism  in  that  he 

1  Eucken,  Can  We  Still  Be  Christians?  p.  144. 

173 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

defends  and  maintains  the  necessity  of  the 
ideal  to  all  true  progress.  He  does  not 
thereby,  however,  commit  himself  to  that 
system  of  necessity  in  which  intellectualism 
finds  itself.  Reality  lies,  not  in  the  Divine 
as  a  passive  thing,  but,  rather,  in  its 
realization,  in  its  springing  into  action  in 
the  concrete.  At  the  same  time  that  he 
thus  makes  place  for  freedom  and  initiative 
he  escapes  that  pantheism  into  which  abso- 
lute idealism  inevitably  falls.  The  only  dif- 
ference here  between  Eucken  and  Bowne  is 
one  of  emphasis  rather  then  essence. 

Bowne  brings  his  thought  to  great  clear- 
ness and  definiteness  by  gathering  it  up  into 
his  definition  of  personality.  The  difference 
is  not  constitutional.  It  has  been  Bowne's 
distinctive  task  to  develop  the  idea  of  per- 
sonality. Eucken's  peculiar  work  has  been 
to  emphasize  the  place  and  reality  of  the 
life  of  the  spirit. 

The  Absence  of  the  Christological 
Interest 

There  is  at  one  point  an  essential  differ- 
ence between  Bowne  and  Eucken.    This  is 
174 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

at  the  point  which  affects  the  Christological 
interest,  which  is  a  very  important  part  of 
Bowne's  system.  With  Eucken,  the  appear- 
ance of  the  Deity  in  a  historic  point  of  time, 
speaking  hkewise  an  eternal  message,  is  un- 
thinkable. The  realization  of  the  moral 
idea  agrees  inevitably  with  a  slow  advance 
toward  such  an  ideal.  The  ideal  itself  is 
affected  by  its  reahzation.  Any  revelation 
of  a  perfect  ideal  in  a  historic  personality 
seems  to  him  to  put  a  stop  to  struggle  and 
progress.  To  him  such  revelation  is  incon- 
gruous with  imperfect  human  comprehen- 
sion and  achievement.  Eucken  himself  tells 
us  of  the  impossibility  of  the  atheistic  stand- 
point and  assumes  theism  as  the  necessary 
moral  grounding  of  the  ideal  which  lifts  it 
above  the  individual  judgments  and  ca- 
prices of  men  to  universal  validity.  To 
Bowne  this  very  view  would  demand  the 
incarnation  for  its  completion.  Eucken  has 
spoken  of  love  as  a  manifestation  of  this 
universally  valid  moral  ideal.  Yet  it  would 
be  impossible  in  a  world  of  pain  and  error, 
of  human  vanity  and  failure,  of  ruthless  and 
crushing  brute  force,  to  conceive  of  love  as 
175 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

the  possession  of  the  Supreme  Moral  Being 
unless  we  had  been  directed  to  it  through 
the  life  of  Jesus  himself.  The  incarnation 
becomes  in  the  experience  of  man  the  most 
effective  spur  to  the  realization  of  that  ideal. 
The  deity  of  Jesus  hinges  upon  this  moral 
necessity.  We  have  again  and  again  in 
human  history  the  example  of  men  in  a 
supreme  self-renunciation  giving  their  lives 
for  the  realization  of  the  higher  moral  aims 
and  happiness  of  their  fellow  men.  What 
shall  we  conclude  concerning  a  magnified 
personality,  the  abode  of  absolute  ideals, 
who  can  do  no  more  than  give  advice  by 
which  to  offset  the  disheartening  evils  and 
the  crushing  sorrows  of  the  world  .^^  Without 
an  incarnation  man  would  himself  be  cap- 
able of  a  moral  grandeur  and  outlook  of 
which  God  would  give  no  evidence.  The 
incarnation  is  necessary  to  save  the  thought 
of  moral  perfection  in  God.  An  incarnation 
past  or  an  incarnation  to  come  would  seem 
to  Bowne  to  be  implied  by  the  demands  of 
thought. 

"If  God  had  filled  space  and  time  with 
inanimate  worlds,  that  would  have  revealed 
176 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

only  power  and  skill.  If  he  had  filled  the 
world  with  pleasure-giving  contrivances, 
that  would  have  revealed  benevolence.  If 
he  had  sent  us  prophets  and  teachers  at  no 
real  cost  to  himself,  that  too  would  be 
something;  but  it  would  not  greatly  stir 
our  hearts  toward  God.  Our  love  would  go 
out  to  the  prophets  and  teachers  themselves, 
for  the  toil  and  pain  would  fall  on  them. 
In  all  beneficence  of  this  sort  God  would 
appear  simply  as  a  rich  man  who  out  of  his 
abundance  scatters  bounty  to  the  needy, 
but  at  no  cost  to  himself.  A  certain  grati- 
tude would  indeed  be  possible,  but  along 
this  line  God  would  forever  remain  morally 
below  the  moral  heroes  of  our  race.  Their 
gifts  cost.  They  put  themselves  and  their 
hearts  into  their  work.  They  attain  to  the 
morality  of  self-sacrifice,  and  this  is  in- 
finitely beyond  the  morality  of  any  giving 
that  does  not  cost.  And  there  must  ever 
be  a  higher  moral  possibility  until  we  reach 
the  revelation  of  God  in  self-sacrifice,  until 
God  becomes  the  chief  of  burden-bearers 
and  the  leader  of  all  in  self-abnegation. 
.  .  .  Thus  the  power  of  God's  revelation  has 
177 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

its  chief  source  in  the  incarnation.  And  we 
may  be  perfectly  sure  that  no  lower  con- 
ception of  God  will  permanently  command 
the  minds  and  hearts  of  men.  We  should 
not  have  reached  the  conception  ourselves, 
but  now  that  it  has  been  revealed  to  us,  we 
see  that  something  of  the  kind  is  a  moral 
necessity  if  we  are  to  think  the  highest 
thought  of  God.  And  there  is  a  peculiar 
dialectic  in  human  thought  whereby  we  are 
compelled  to  think  of  God  as  perfect  or  not 
at  all.  An  imperfect  God  is  none.  As  soon 
as  a  higher  conception  emerges  we  must 
adopt  it  into  our  thought  of  God  or  see  our 
faith  in  him  fade  out  until  it  vanishes  alto- 
gether. A  fairly  good  God  we  cannot  abide. 
We  can  be  satisfied  with  nothing  less  than 
the  supreme  and  the  perfect.  Hence  it  is 
that  the  Christian  thought  of  God  wins  its 
way.  It  is  the  only  one  worthy  of  God  or 
man.  '• 

How  God  could  empty  himself  to  become 
a  partaker  in  human  toils  and  sorrows  will 
remain,  of  course,  inexplicable.  It  will  also 
remain  bej^ond  our  comprehension  how  a 

*  Bowne,  Studies  in  Christianity,  pp.  96,  104. 

178 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

timeless  personality  could  reveal  himself  to 
any  part  of  his  world  in  any  degree,  or,  in 
revealing  the  moral  ideal  to  man,  consent 
to  work  under  the  limitations  of  time.  The 
particular  ground  of  this  difficulty  is  in  the 
confusing  of  the  power  world  with  the 
space  and  time  world. 

If,  however,  the  debate  should  rage  about 
the  thought  of  the  possession  by  the  historic 
Jesus  in  the  flesh  of  all  the  divine  powers 
and  attributes  in  order  to  establish  his 
Deity,  we  have  recourse  to  the  theory  of  the 
Kenosis.  We  believe  his  deity  is  sufficiently 
verified  by  the  revelation  of  perfect  moral 
character  which  formed  the  supreme  object 
of  his  revelation.  The  deity  of  Jesus  is 
proved  neither  by  genealogy  nor  miracle  in 
themselves. 

The  character  and  personality  of  Jesus  is 
the  world's  great  miracle.  The  most  con- 
vincing test  for  the  present  age  is  to  be 
found  in  the  essentially  universal  master- 
ship of  the  character  of  Jesus,  and  his  ability 
to  satisfy  the  moral  and  spiritual  demands  of 
all  classes  and  conditions  of  men.  No  other 
man,  prophet  or  hero,  ever  lived  that  could 
179 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

for  any  length  of  time,  for  all  races  of  man, 
fuliBll  in  his  own  character  their  highest  ideal 
of  the  character  of  God.  Eucken  speaks  of 
him  as  classified  with  other  great  geniuses. 
Viewed  from  the  single  standpoint  of  his 
teaching  of  moral  truth,  this  might  be. 
One  might  come  with  transcendent  spirit- 
ual insight  to  do  for  the  realm  of  religion 
what  Shakespeare  and  Mozart  have  done 
in  the  realm  of  literature  and  music.  But 
great  genius  has  too  often  been  common- 
place in  morals  and  in  ideals.  There  is  no 
certainty  that  a  future  age  may  not  produce 
a  greater  master  than  either.  The  love  and 
the  passion  of  Jesus,  his  revelation  of  the 
moral  character  of  God,  can  never  be 
transcended  so  long  as  humanity  shall  re- 
tain its  essential  nature.  But  Jesus  is  much 
more  than  the  teacher  of  a  truth  which  has 
not  been  transcended.  In  the  case  of  spirit- 
ual revelation,  the  personality  of  the  teacher 
is  quite  as  important  as  his  message.  Not 
only  are  his  truths  compelling  for  all  classes 
of  men,  his  personality  has  never  been 
transcended  as  the  supreme  goal  of  man's 
achievement.  He  thus  remains  undimmed 
180 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

above  the  march  of  ages,  and  every  moral 
advance  of  the  race  but  serves  to  increase 
the  appreciation  in  which  he  is  held.  The 
actual  test  between  Jesus  and  other  geniuses 
is  to  be  found  in  his  character,  in  himself. 
His  deity  is  to  be  read  in  the  universal 
compulsion  and  validity  of  his  order  of 
life.  Incarnation  is  the  easiest  and  most 
satisfying  explanation  of  the  character  of 
Jesus.    All  others  break  down. 

Disagreement  with  his  Christological 
views  is  likely  to  blind  the  eyes  of  many  of 
the  most  conscientious  to  the  greatness  and 
the  importance  to  religion  of  the  work  of 
Rudolf  Eucken.  He  easily  represents  the 
supreme  philosophical  message  of  our  day, 
and  his  constructive  work  and  leadership 
promises  to  wield  a  profound  influence  in 
the  cause  of  faith.  His  voice  comes  to  liis 
time  like  that  of  one  of  the  Hebrew  prophets, 
when  the  age  engrossed  in  the  pursuit  of 
material  things  was  forgetting  that  it  had  a 
soul  at  all.  He  speaks  to  an  age  that  in  its 
scientific  thinking  has  steadily  barred  out 
the  spiritual  as  an  illusion  and  a  dream. 
He  speaks  to  a  world  of  philosophy  which 
181 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

to  a  large  degree  has  lost  its  way  in  the 
meshes  of  skepticism  and  materialism.  And 
his  word  is  ever  for  the  reality  of  the  higher 
things  of  the  spirit,  in  behalf  of  the  neces- 
sity for  the  moral  regeneration  of  man,  and 
the  life  that  is  lived  in  conscious  harmony 
with  God.  He  shows  in  phrases  of  beauty 
and  convincing  power  that  though  a  man 
possess  the  whole  world,  if  he  loses  his  own 
soul  he  has  utterly  failed.  For  back  of  all 
our  getting  and  enjoying  the  fundamental 
truth  of  life  is  the  spiritual.  Adapting  an 
old,  old  thought,  the  chief  end  of  man  is 
the  realization  of  God. 


182 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


CHAPTER  XII 

BOWNE'S  PERSONALISM  AND  THE 
PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE 

At  the  risk  of  repetition,  it  may  be  well 
to  touch  upon  the  relation  of  Personalism 
to  some  of  the  problems  of  life.  Bowne 
saw,  as  few  others,  how  impossible  it  is  to 
account  for  an  intelligible  and  orderly  world, 
for  knowledge  and  for  spiritual  reality,  on 
the  plane  of  the  impersonal.  This  was  his 
distinctive  contribution  to  philosophy.  So 
clear  was  his  criticism  along  this  line  that 
all  metaphysical  thinking  will  be  forced  to 
take  account  of  it. 

Unity  Possible  Only  Through 
Personalism 
Personalism  is  the  most  reasonable  solu- 
tion of  the  problem  of  unity.     A  unity  ob- 
tained  by   assuming   a   unitary   substance 
must  inevitably  negate  the  reality  of  knowl- 
edge, mind,  and  spirit.     A  unity  which  is 
won  by  lifting  time  and  space  into  realities 
183 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

independent  of  all  intelligence,  involves 
confusion  no  less  than  that  of  materialism. 
Time  as  duration  cannot  be  thought  with- 
out a  clearly  defined  personality  which  is 
more  than  consciousness,  more  than  memory, 
self-directing  and  free.  Change  and  identity 
are  irreconcilable  except  through  an  abiding 
Personality  surviving  above  their  fluctua- 
tions. A  unity  obtained  by  assuming  an 
Absolute  of  whose  thought  the  world  is  but 
the  outworking,  ends  in  a  pantheism  fatal 
to  all  freedom  or  individuality.  If  instead 
of  naming  a  vague  Absolute  as  the  ground 
of  all  things,  we  assume  a  free  Personality 
upholding  the  world  of  things,  and  the 
world  of  spirits  endowed  by  him  with  a 
freedom  akin  to  his  own,  then  all  is  well. 
There  exists,  then,  no  insoluble  problem  of 
how  the  mind  can  grasp  matter  or  of  how  its 
knowledge  can  represent  reality.  It  is  no 
longer  necessary  to  attempt  the  tracing  of 
matter  and  motion  and  molecular  change 
into  the  brain  cells  to  account  for  an  idea 
of  beauty  or  an  aspiration  of  the  soul  after 
God.  We  note  for  scientific  or  pathological 
purposes  the  physical  changes  and  the  psy- 
184 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

chological  results,  but  we  no  longer  dream 
that  we  have  grasped  all  the  faetors  in  the 
process,  nor  do  we  relegate  to  the  realm  of 
unreality  all  that  our  investigation  fails  to 
explain.  We  think  truly  of  the  world  of 
matter  because  the  world  of  matter  is 
founded  in  an  Intelligence  related  to  our 
own.  The  mind  and  the  world  are  by  their 
very  nature  prepared  to  correspond  and  co- 
operate, and  both  find  synthesis  and  agree- 
ment in  that  intelligent  Personality  which  is 
able  to  grasp  all  and  to  act  in  all. 

There  is  no  longer  a  conflict  between 
science  and  religion,  because  the  laws  of 
nature  are  seen  as  the  self-imposed  ways  of 
the  Divine  in  bringing  forth  the  order  of 
change.  Natural  laws  are  not  erected  into 
an  independent  system  in  which  God  is  a 
slave,  for  they  are  but  the  uniformities  of 
his  activity.  The  deductions  which  we  draw 
from  the  order  of  sequence  are  not  to  be 
given  a  causal  efficiency. 

Personalism  and  Freedom 

We  thus  come  to  the  problem  of  freedom 
and  necessity.    Freedom  is  not  provided  for 
185 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

in  any  naturalistic  scheme  whatever.  This 
is  not  alone  because  of  innate  or  a  priori 
ideas  which  cannot  be  traced  to  experience. 
It  is  not  merely  inability  to  trace  the 
products  of  reflection  to  appropriate  nervous 
excitations.  The  power  of  self -directing  per- 
sonality to  introduce  its  own  will  as  a  new 
factor  into  the  order  of  nature  is  too  evident 
in  common  experience  to  be  overlooked. 
This  introduction  of  purpose  to  modify  the 
natural  processes  is  something  of  which 
nature  herself  is  evidently  incapable.  The 
mechanical  system  of  causation  would  not 
only  deprive  man  of  individuality,  but 
would  preclude  the  possibility  of  moral 
action. 

The  outcome  of  absolutism  of  the  extreme 
type  is  very  close  to  that  of  materialism 
despite  their  wide  difference  of  spirit  and  of 
aim.  Absolutism,  seeing  in  all  a  manifesta- 
tion of  the  Divine  Idea,  cannot  escape  mak- 
ing God  a  moral  monster,  responsible  for 
the  weaknesses,  errors,  and  sins  of  men. 
By  the  same  token  man  would  be  no  longer 
morally  responsible,  because  he  would  not  be 
free.  He  would  be  but  the  unresisting  tool 
186 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

through  which  the  Divine  works  somctiraes 
good  and  sometimes  ill. 

On  the  personal  plane  we  can  affirm  a 
good  and  perfect  God  who  has  given  to  man 
a  personality  measurably  like  his  own,  free 
to  act  in  accordance  with  or  against  the 
Divine  will.  Moral  action  is  of  like  nature 
in  God  and  man,  being  voluntarily  chosen 
in  distinction  from  wrong.  Man  becomes 
thus  morally  responsible,  and  his  freedom 
to  make  a  confusion  of  God's  world  is  a 
gift  to  which  he  is  to  be  held  strictly  to 
account.  He  is  no  longer  to  be  considered 
as  giving  forth  the  thoughts  and  activities 
to  which  he  is  compelled  by  physical  en- 
vironment, nor  is  he  an  automaton,  finding 
all  his  thoughts  of  holiness  or  wickedness 
inspired  by  the  Eternal,  the  manifestations 
of  whose  thought  under  the  absolutist 
scheme,  they  would  be. 

Personalism  and  the  Problem  of  Evil 

The  schools  of  idealism  and  of  material- 
ism find  equal  difficulty  when  they  face  the 
problem  of  evil.    If  one  were  compelled  to 
choose  between  the  two,  the  dilemma  which 
187 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

they  present  is  this:  either  a  God  who  is 
as  responsible  for  evil  as  he  is  for  good,  or  a 
world  that  is  essentially  unmoral.  In  either 
case  it  would  be  impossible  to  hold  to  indi- 
vidual moral  responsibility.  No  doubt  if  all 
the  wrong  that  springs  from  immoral  think- 
ing and  acting  were  eliminated,  the  great 
mass  of  evil  that  depresses  man  and  creates 
his  problem  would  be  done  away.  Still 
there  would  remain  the  mysteries  of  pain 
and  death,  and  for  these  it  would  at  first 
seem  almost  impossible  to  clear  the  Infinite 
Personality.  This  point  is  the  rock  on  which 
theism  is  supposed  to  wreck  itself. 

One  thing  is  certain:  there  can  be  no 
satisfactory  solution  for  human  spirits  along 
the  line  of  blind,  purposeless,  impersonal 
causation.  If  our  sorrows,  griefs,  and  ills 
are  not  for  discipline  after  some  manner,  we 
have  simply  to  cry  into  the  dark.  We  may 
not  be  able  to  satisfy  our  minds,  but  we 
certainly  cannot  satisfy  our  souls  except 
through  assuming  a  divine  purpose  which 
works  good  in  our  behalf  through  pain. 
When  to  the  demand  of  our  spirits  we  add 
the  consciousness  of  our  limitations  in 
188 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

knowledge  and  our  lack  of  understanding  of 
disciplines  which  have  afterward  proved  the 
most  substantial  blessings,  we  can  see  how 
an  Intelligence  not  bound  to  the  temporal 
form  of  experience,  seeing  the  end  from  the 
beginning,  in  view  of  the  moral  discipline 
attained,  might  account  the  whole  course  as 
very  good.  Why  discipline  should  be  neces- 
sary is  a  question  bound  up  with  that  of  the 
attainment  of  character.  That  it  is  neces- 
sary is  a  commonplace  of  experience. 

If  the  further  question  of  the  suffering  of 
the  innocent  for  the  guilty  is  invoked,  we 
can  only  say  that,  in  such  a  case,  suffering 
is  a  contribution  to  the  moral  progress  of 
the  world.  Voluntarily  accepted,  it  becomes 
to  the  sufferer,  by  that  strange  mystery  of 
personality,  the  deepest  and  most  satisfying 
joy  that  life  can  give.  If  to  this  thought 
should  be  added  the  thought  of  the  Creator 
of  all  entering  with  moral  fullness  into 
human  life  and  giving  himself  for  the  moral 
welfare  of  his  creatures,  we  should  at  once 
make  possible  the  maintenance  of  theism  in 
the  face  of  the  problem  of  evil.  This  as- 
sumption would  also  be  in  strict  keeping 
189 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

with  the  deepest  facts  of  religion  and  of  Hfe. 
In  the  world  around  us  we  begin  to  see 

On  every  side 
Great  hints  of  Him  go  by — 
Souls  that  are  hourly  crucified 
On  some  new  Calvary! 


In  flower  and  dust,  in  chaff  and  grain. 
He  binds  Himself  and  dies! 
We  live  by  His  eternal  pain. 
His  hourly  sacrifice.^ 

What  of  death,  that  last  but  not  most 
inexplicable  of  mysteries?  No  man  who 
has  had  wide  experience  of  life  is  unaware 
that  in  a  world  of  physical  and  moral  in- 
firmity there  frequently  arise  situations  to 
which  death  itself  is  a  welcome  relief.  Here, 
as  before,  there  is  no  explanation  on  the 
impersonal  plane.  The  world  has  too  often 
witnessed  the  cynicism  and  moral  flabbiness 
of  those  who  assume  that  there  is  no  sur- 
vival of  death.  That  assumption  has  long 
been  proved  as  not  the  road  that  leads  to 
high  moral  achievement  and  the  enrich- 
ment of  life  with  things  most  precious.    So 

*  Noyes,  "Vicisti  Galileae,"  Collected  Poems,  vol.  i,  p.  244. 

190 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

much  there  is  for  the  practical  side  of  the 
argument. 

On  the  theoretical  side  is  still  another 
consideration.  In  our  knowledge  we  are 
shut  up  to  the  present  order  of  existence. 
We  cannot  look  at  life  from  the  standpoint 
of  any  other  order.  It  might  be  that  to  see 
it  from  another  order  would  transmute  death 
into  blessed  good  fortune,  the  thing  most 
to  be  desired.    It  might  indeed,  be  found  that 

*'Death  is  but  a  change  of  key. 
In  life  the  golden  melody." 

On  the  personal  plane,  then,  if  we  can  trust 
the  wisdom  of  the  Supreme  Personal  Intelli- 
gence, even  the  last  of  the  dark  problems,  if 
not  finding  abstract  solution,  may  yet  find 
one  sufficient  for  the  individual  need.  Even 
Henley,  with  liis  sense  of  pessimism,  could 
come  to  look  on  death  with  complacency  as 
the  benediction  of  a  departing  day,  thrilled 
with  the  sense  of  the  triumphing  night, 

Night  with  her  train  of  stars 
And  her  great  gift  of  sleep. 

In  this  mood  he  could  pray  with  a  steady 
courage, 

191 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

"So  be  my  passing! 
My  task  accomplished  and  the  long  day  done. 
My  wages  taken,  and  in  my  heart 
Some  late  lark  singing." 

Here  too  he  came  to  look  for  the  solution 
of  earthly  misunderstanding  and  irrecon- 
cilable ills  as  voiced  in  lines  said  to  have 
been  addressed  to  Robert  Louis  Steven- 
son: 

O  Death  and  Time  they  chime  and  chime 

Like  bells  at  sunset  falling! 

They  end  the  song,  they  right  the  wrong. 

They  set  the  old  echoes  calling: 
For  Death  and  Time  bring  on  the  prime 

Of  God's  own  chosen  weather. 
And  we  lie  in  the  peace  of  the  Great  Release 

As  once  in  the  grass  together. 

It  is  not  only  impossible  to  face  the  prob- 
lem of  evil  with  any  satisfaction  apart  from 
the  personalistic  view.  The  problem  can 
never  be  solved  in  the  abstract.  It  must 
be  solved  in  each  particular  case  as  it 
arises.  In  some  cases  this  seems  quite  im- 
possible, but  in  most  death  comes  as  a 
benevolence  to  the  individual,  second  only 
to  birth  itself.  For,  after  all,  the  value  of 
192 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

a  life  is  not  determined  by  its  length,  but 
by  its  realization  of  the  highest  things. 

Let  the  great  winds  their  worst  and  wildest  blow. 
Or  the  gold  weather  mellow  round  us  slow: 
We  have  fulfilled  ourselves,  and  we  can  dare 
And  we  can  conquer. 

Personality  is  surely  the  richest  gift  of  man, 
and  who  can  deny  that  it  is  likewise  the 
supreme  possession  of  God.'^ 

Mr.  James  has  said  in  his  Pluralistic  Uni- 
verse: "A  man's  vision  is  the  great  fact 
about  him.  A  philosophy  is  the  expression 
of  a  man's  intimate  character,  and  all  the 
definitions  of  the  universe  are  but  the  de- 
liberately adopted  reactions  of  human  char- 
acters upon  it."  This  was  particularly  true 
of  Bowne.  It,  as  much  as  his  philosophy, 
was  the  source  of  his  deep  and  widening 
influence.  Men  gathered  from  east  and 
west  to  hear  his  teaching  with  varying 
preparation  and  adaptability  for  philosoph- 
ical endeavor.  The  intellectual  rewards 
which  they  carried  away  were  as  varied 
as  the  men  who  came,  but  all  had  this  in 
common:  each  was  certain  that  he  had  felt 

193 


PERSONALISM  AND  THE 

the  touch  of  a  master  spirit.  They  were 
one  in  a  feehng  of  exaltation  and  inspira- 
tion. Wherever  they  have  gone  to  the 
various  tasks  of  business  or  professional 
life,  or  social  ministry,  they  have  gone 
even  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  in  a  new, 
high  sense  of  the  greatness  and  meaning  of 
life  and  with  a  loyalty  that  time  cannot 
dim.  If  two  such  meet  in  the  antipodes, 
the  common  meeting  ground  is  "Did  you 
take  Bowne's  work.^^"  The  underlying  sig- 
nificance of  all  this  is  the  inspiration  of  an 
unusual  personality,  a  mind  that  rang  so 
true  that  it  satisfied  the  most  questioning 
youth,  a  vision  and  an  insight  which  lifted 
the  student  into  the  heights  and  enabled 
him  to  grasp  the  relations  of  life  to  the 
world,  to  man,  and  to  God.  Accused  by 
the  shallow-minded  of  heresy,  the  strong  re- 
ligious tone  of  all  Bowne's  teaching  was  its 
predominant  characteristic.  This  was  the 
very  point  most  criticized  by  his  philo- 
sophical contemporaries,  to  whom  the  rec- 
ognition of  religious  verity  was  a  sign  of 
philosophical  weakness.  The  religious  note 
was  never  wanting  as  he  unfolded  to  his 
194 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

eager  students  the  thought  of  the  great 
minds  of  the  centuries.  Never  did  he  fail 
to  draw  them  in  perspective  to  the  thought 
of  One  who  was  his  Master.    We 

"Watched  the  great  hills,  like  clouds  arise  and  set; 
And  one  named  Olivet" 

was  never  missing  from  the  horizon. 

For  this  reason  he  was  at  the  close  of 
life  fitted  as  perhaps  no  other  man  of  his 
time  for  great  constructive  religious  and 
intellectual  leadership.  lie  was  already  be- 
ginning to  influence  profoundly  the  thought 
of  the  Orient  as  he  had  already  influenced 
many  in  the  West.  It  was  his  distinction  to 
be  almost  better  known  in  Germany  than  at 
home.  His  loyalty  to  an  institution  kept 
him  from  entering  into  that  large  measure 
of  recognition  that  might  have  come  to  him 
earlier.  So  far  as  human  judgment  can  dis- 
cern, he  is  gone  too  soon.  But  his  work  will 
live.  It  was  done  so  truly,  so  conscien- 
tiously, so  greatly,  that  its  influence  is 
certain  to  deepen  with  the  passing  years. 
This  will  prove  true  in  that  age  which  we 
feel  is  just  at  hand,  when  men  will  more 
195 


PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

generally  recognize  the  inadequacy  of  great 
thinking  which  is  lacking  in  reverence  and 
respect  for  the  profounder  realities  and 
problems  of  our  mortal  life.  There  is  that 
in  the  work  of  Bowne  that  answers  to  the 
deepest  spiritual  questionings,  and  in  death 
as  in  life  he  can  await  the  judgment  of  the 
years  unhumiliated  and  unafraid. 


196 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Included  in  this  list  are  the  titles  which  have  been 
found  most  helpful  in  the  particular  field  covered. 
It  does  not  aim  to  be  exhaustive. 

General 
Adamson,  Development  of  Modern  Philosophy. 
Bowne,  Metaphysics. 
Bowne,  Personalism. 
Bowne,  Philosophy  of  Theism. 
Bowne,  Studies  in  Christianity. 
Bowne,  The  Essence  of  Religion. 
Bowne,  Theory  of  Thought  and  Knowledge. 
Caird,  Problems  of  Philosophy  at  the  Present  Time. 
Dewmg,   Introduction  to  the  History  of  Modern 

Philosophy. 
Eucken,  The  Problem  of  Human  Life. 
Hoffding,  History  of  Modern  Philosophy. 
Janet    and    Sailles,    History    of    the    Problems    of 

Philosophy. 
Klilpe,  Philosophy  of  the  Present  in  Germany. 
Pfleiderer,  Philosophy  and  Development  of  Religion. 
Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy. 

197 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ancient  Philosophy 

Adamson,  Development  of  Greek  Philosophy. 

Aristotle,  Logic. 

Aristotle,  Metaphysics. 

Eucken,  Fundamental  Concepts  of  Modern  Thought. 

Eucken,  Life's  Basis  and  Life's  Ideal. 

Gompers,  Greek  Thinkers. 

Materialism 
Bowne,  Kant  and  Spencer. 
Eucken,  The  Truth  of  Religion. 
Hoffding,  Influence  of  the  Conception  of  Evolution. 
Lange,  History  of  Materialism. 

Kant 

Bowne,  Kant  and  Spencer. 
Kant,  Critique  of  Pure  Reason. 
Stahlin,  Kant,  Lotze,  and  Ritschl  (Reply  to  Lange, 
Materialism) . 

Lotze 

Caspari,  Hermann  Lotze,  etc.,  pp.  4  and  53. 

Falckenberg,  Hermann  Lotze. 

Jones,  Critical  Account  of  the  Philosophy  of  Lotze. 

Kiilpe,  Philosophy  of  the  Present  in  Germany  (Lotze 
chapter). 

Lotze,  Metaphysics. 

Lotze,  Microcosmus. 

Pfleiderer,  Lotze's  philosophische  Weltanschauung 
nach  ihren  Grundzugen.  (Sympathetic  treat- 
ment.) 

198 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Schiller,  Humanism  (Reference  to  Lotze). 
Seth,  Development  from  Kant  to  Hegel. 

Pragmatism 

Bawden,  Principles  of  Pragmatism, 

Berthelot,    Un   Romantisme   utilitaire    (Volume   II 

contains    exhaustive    treatment    of    Bergson's 

Pragmatism). 
Davidson,  The  Stoic  Creed. 
De  Laguna,  Dogmatism  and  Evolution. 
Haldane,  Pathway  to  Reality. 
James,  Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism. 
James,  Pluralistic  Universe. 
James,  Pragmatism. 
James,  Problems  of  Philosophy. 
James,  Will  to  Believe. 

Jourdain,  Theory  of  the  Infinite  in  Modern  Thought. 
Lyman,  Influence  of  Pragmatism  on  Theology. 
Parker,   Plato  and   Pragmatism   (short   essay,   but 

very  good). 
Schiller,  Humanism. 

Schiller,  Riddles  of  the  Sphinx  (3rd  edition). 
Schinz,  Anti-pragmatism. 
Vernon  Lee,  Vital  Lies. 

Bergson 

Bergson,  Creative  Evolution. 

Bergson,    Introduction    to    Metaphysics     (Article, 

Metaphysical  and  Moral  Revelation,  January, 

'03). 

199 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Bergson,  Matter  and  Memory. 

Bergson,  The  Immediate  Data  of  Consciousness. 

Bergson,  Time  and  Free  Will. 

Hermann,  Eucken  and  Bergson. 

James,  Pluralistic  Universe,  Chapter  VI. 

Le  Roy,  New  Philosophy  of  Bergson. 

Ruhe  and  Paul,  Henri  Bergson,  An  Account  of  His 

Life  and  Personality. 
Solomon,  Bergson. 

Eucken 
Eucken,  Life's  Basis  and  Life's  Ideal. 
Eucken,  Main  Currents  of  Modern  Thought. 
Eucken,  Problem  of  Human  Life. 
Eucken,  The  Life  of  the  Spirit. 
Eucken,  The  Truth  of  Religion. 
Gibson,  Eucken's  Philosophy  of  Life. 
Hermann,  Eucken  and  Bergson. 


200 


INDEX 

Arcesilaus,  pragmati.st,  115 

Aristotle's  attempt  to  reconcile  universal  and  particular,  74; 
relation  to  Plato,  74;  hostile  to  doctrine  of  Divine  Per- 
sonality, 79f.;  Divine  Will  as  Prime  Mover,  78f.;  view  of 
knowledge,  20f. 

Atomism,  as  basis  of  perception,  51ff.,  77f.,  184f.,  Bacon's 
contribution  to,  55;  begins  with  Lcucippus,  50;  as  a  method 
of  science,  58,  184f.;  a  phantom  of  thought,  52f.,  56,  73; 
of  Epicurus,  54;  of  Stoics,  54f;  restricted  value,  57 

Bergson,  his  abstractness,  151,  167;  a  becoming  God  impos- 
sible, 157f.,  160-162;  criticism  of  Spencer,  59,  69,  146f.; 
definition  of  Being,  147f.;  reality,  as  "vital  impulse," 
147f.;  statement  of  problem  of  philosophy,  145f.;  time  as 
duration,  148ff.,  158f. 

Bowne,  advance  on  Aristotle's  World-Ground,  79;  advance 
from  Lotze's  position,  105ff.;  in  definition  of  reality,  105; 
affirming  Personality  fundamental,  106-108;  avoids  deter- 
minism of  empiricism,  132f.;  his  central  thought,  19,  183f.; 
compared  with  Lotze,  19,  22;  limits  realm  of  physics,  103; 
denies  explanation  by  classification,  103;  refuses  astound- 
ing claims  of  atomism,  103;  denies  absentee  God,  103f.; 
points  emptiness  of  mechanical  causation,  104 

Bowne's  criticism  of  Spencer,  59,  60;  debt  to  Lotze,  102; 
definition  of  Being,  131f.;  definition  of  reality,  74f.,  83, 
106,  108f.;  definition  of  religion,  25,  29,  141;  personality, 
193-196;  Eucken's  estimate  of,  18fT.,  24,  30;  philosophical 
aim,  11;  idea  of  ethics,  20,  141;  metaphysical  theism,  25; 
opposition  to  absolutism,  130f.;  opposition  to  naturalism, 
24;  pragmatism,  130-141;  religious  interest,  20;  sincerity, 
19f.;  starting  point,  life,  25-27;  theism,  25;  view  of  the 
incarnation,  176ff.;  view  of  the  practical,  27f.;  view  of  time 
and  space,  137ff.,  159flF. 

Bruno,  conception  of  monads,  55 

201 


INDEX 

Carneades's  pragmatism,  115 

Causation,    cfBcient   and   phenomenal,    57,    79,    81,    94,    133; 

explained  in  terms  of  personality,  80f.,  133 
Cause  and  effect,  78,  133 

Change  and  personality,  91,  134,  139,  155f.,  184 
Common-sense  view  of  the  world,  39 
Creative  evolution,  40,  105-167 

Deity  of  Jesus,  moral  necessity,  176-181,  189f. 
Democritus,  relation  to  materialism,  52 
Descartes,  theory  of  induction,  56 
Doubt  and  prosperity,  38 
Dualism  of  Kant,  94 

Epicurus'  atomism,  54 

Error,  the  problem  of  naturalism,  75,  82 

Error,  problem  of,  met  by  personalism,  75,  83. 

Eucken  quoted,  11,  80,  on  pragmatism,  113,  128f. 

Eucken  and  Bowne,  pupils  of  Lotze,  169 

Eucken,  relation  to  Bowne,  15,  169f.,  174f. 

Eucken's  "activism"  to  solve  philosophical  antithesis,    171; 

difficulty  with    the   idea  of   incarnation,    175f.;    particular 

contribution,  174,  180f.;  supreme  message,  181f.;  view  of 

truth,  170f. 
Evil,  problem  of  idealism,  75 
Evil,  problem  of,  not  avoided  by  pluralism,   125f.;  met  by 

personalism,  76,  83,  187-193 
Evolutionist  confusion  of  cause  and  effect,  25 

Fallacy  of  the  universal,  68;  main  support  of  Spencer,  68; 
in  Bergson,  151 

Faust,  Walpurgis  Night,  58 

First  Cause  not  reached  by  naturalism,  78 

Freedom,  attended  by  error  and  evil,  76;  dependent  on  per- 
sonality, 82f.,  125,  152f.,  185ff.;  not  reached  by  pluralism, 
125;  through  activism,  in  Eucken,  174 

202 


INDEX 

Galileo's  application  of  malhomatical  principle,  56 
God,  as  Immanent  Mover,  Howne's  view,  71),  159ff.,  184f.; 
as  Prime  Mover,  Aristotle's  view,  78f.;  Bergson's  view,  161f.; 
becoming  God  of  Bergson,  not  tenable,  157ff.,  162;  behind 
phenomena,  23,  161,  IS'tf.;  chief  argument  for,  the  prac- 
tical interest,  95f. ;  underlying  principle  of  the  world,  22, 
29,  161 
Greek  philosophy,  contribution  to  science,  50 

Hegel's    absolute    idealism,    98,    100;    doctrine    of    thought 

processes,  24;  view  of  religion,  26 
Henley  quoted,  190,  191,  192 
Hylozoism,  55,  57 

Idealism,  inadequate  for  explanation,   39,   40;   must  answer 

problem  of  evil,  41 
Immanence,  Divine,  79 
Incarnation,    Bowne's   view,    176fif.;    Eucken's   exception   to, 

174f.;  necessary  to  thought,  175f.,  189 
Indestructibility  of  matter  a  working  postulate,  66 
Intuition,  value  to  religion,  166-168 
Intuitional  and  reflective  knowledge,  164-167 

James,  William,  pragmatism,  116-129;  guilty  of  abstract- 
ness,  117 

Kant's  contribution,  constitutive  activity  of  mind,  87;  dual- 
ism, 94;  effort  for  objective  validity  fails,  90f.;  subjectivism, 
92f.;  view  of  reality,  93;  view  of  time  and  space,  87;  saw 
only  subjective  side,  89 

Lee,  Vernon,  quoted,  127f. 

Leucippus,  founder  of  atomism,  50 

Lotze    compared    with    Bowne,    19,    22,    105ff.;    opposed    to 

absolutism,  99f. 
Lotze's  aim,  19,  98f.;  definition  of  reality,  101;  idealism,  98, 

101;  relation  to  Hegel,  98,  100;  religion,  19 

203 


INDEX 

"Man  the  measure  of  all,"  51,  113 

Masterman,  quoted,  31 

Material  basis  of  modern  philosophy,  33 

Materialism,  its  abstraction  completed  in  Democritus,  52; 
its  doctrine  of  reality,  73;  ignores  metaphysical  factors,  73; 
inadequate  for  explanation,  38ff.,  56f.,  77f.;  its  moral 
insufficiency,  82;  of  Spencer  indicated  in  his  doctrine  of 
mind,  69;  use  of  atomic  theory,  50,  73,  75,  77f. 

Matter,  indestructibility  of,  working  postulate,  66 

Mechanical  view  of  thought  process,  39,  82 

Memory,  racial,  emptiness  of  theory,  150f.;  unaccounted  for 
by  Spencer,  64,  71f. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  quoted,  62 

Mind,  constitutive  activity,  Kant's  discovery,  87f. 

Naturalism,  cannot  provide  for  freedom,  185ff.;  its  abstract- 
ness,  58;  based  on  visible,  24;  inadequate  for  explanation, 
38-40,  56f.,  185ff.;  possesses  only  phenomenal  world,  77f.; 
present  attitude  toward  Spencer,  59 

Nature,  new  feeling  toward,  35 

Neoplatonism,  influence  of,  74 

Nervous  action,  as  "double-faced,"  70 

Novelty  as  a  factor  in  evolution,  69;  attempted  in  Bergson's 
"elan  vital,"  147f.,  155ff. 

Noyes,  Alfred,  quoted,  "Resurrection,"  37;  "Creation,"  77; 
"Vicisti  Galileae,"  190 

Optimism,  attendant  on  struggle,  33 

Pain,  modern  attitude  toward,  41f. 

Pantheism  of  Stoics,  54;  untenable,  136f. 

Perception,  more  than  nervous  affection,  78,  184;  Bergson's 

view  of,  145 
Permanence,  problem  of,  91f. 
Personalism  and  freedom,  185ff.;  related  to  problems  of  life, 

183-196;   solution  of  philosophical   antithesis,   44f.,   134f., 

183f.;  and  problems  of  error  and  evil,  83;  and  problems  of 

space  and  time,  90,  106,  137ff.,  184 

204 


INDEX 

Personality,  and  change,  91,  134,  139,  155f.,  184;  divine,  as 
eflScient  cause,  79,  81,  133,  135;  keynote  to  religion  and 
ethics,  20;  novel  factor  in  causation,  80f. 

Pessimism,  fruit  of  material  fullness,  33 

Phenomena,  demand  intelligent  Cause,  93 

Phenomena,  two  contrasting  views,  23 

Phenomenal  and  efficient  causation,  57 

Phenomenalism  of  Lotze,  101 

Philosophy,  influenced  by  circumstances,  33;  its  new  task,  43ff. 

Plato,  ethical  nature  of  his  rationalism,  52;  his  doctrine  of 
Ideas,  129;  relation  to  Aristotle,  74;  resistance  of  mate- 
rialism, 74;  "true  being,"  52 

Pluralism,  failure  to  unite  subject  and  object,  123ff.,  133f.; 
insufficiency,  42f.,  133f.;  outcome  of  materialism,  40,  42; 
unable  to  meet  problem  of  evil,  126 

Pragmatic  attempt  at  unity  through  space  and  time,  121, 
133f.,  137ff.;  doctrine  of  unity,  127,  133;  judgment  of 
religious  values,  96,  140ff.;  pluralism  and  freedom,  125, 
133f.;  test  of  truth,  116f.,  118f.,  120,  129,  130f.,  140ff. 

Pragmatism,  misuse  of,  38;  moral  influence  of,  113f.,  126,  140f.; 
in  modern  life,  37f.,  40;  of  Bowne,  130-141;  of  Pyrrho  and 
the  new  academy,  115;  of  the  Sophists,  113 

Pragmatists,  ancient,  114f.;  modern,  115f. 

Problems,  essential  to  philosophy,  10;  Bergson's  statement  of 
them,  145f. 

Protagoras,  a  pragmatist,  113;  perception  due  to  atomic 
action,  51 

"Pure  Form"  in  Democritus;  system,  52;  in  Plato's  thought,  52 

Purposive  intelligence,  the  bugbear  of  pluralism,  43 

Pyrrho,  a  pragmatist,  115 

Rationalistic  definitions  of  truth,  116f. 

Reality,  Bergson's  definition,  74f.;  Bowne's  definition,  101; 
Eucken's  definition,  174f.;  Kant's  view  of,  93;  Lotze's 
definition,  101;  Spencer's  account  of,  64f.;  fundamental 
definition  of  philosophy,  10,  73 

Reality  of  pain  and  evil,  41 

205 


INDEX 

Religion  and  ethics,  their  relation,  20,  25,  29 

Religion,  the  basis  of  life,  21;  in  relation  to  theology,  27,  29; 
Kant's  view  of,  26,  29,  94f.;  not  subject  to  ordinary  proof, 
20f.,  94f.,  97;  not  wholly  subjective,  30 ;  the  spiritual 
experience  of  humanity,  25 

Ruskin  quoted,  32 

Schiller,  F.  C.  S.,  on  the  Absolute,  view  of  truth,  130 

Schopenhauer,  personal  untruth,  19 

Schleiermacher's  view  of  religion,  26 

Science,    relation    to    modern    life,    35;    relation    to    modern 

philosophy,  34f. 
Space  and  time  made  the  fundamental  realities  in  pragmatism, 

121,  137ff.;  as  forms  of  thought,  87f.;  must  possess  objective 

validity,  89f. 
Spencer  and  modern  naturalism,  59 
Spencer's  appeal  to  "persistence  of  force,"  66;  definition  of 

life,  69;  denial  of  materialism,  61;  doctrine  of  mind,  69f. ; 

doctrine  of  reality,  64f.;  doctrine  of  the  Unknowable,  6 If., 

78;  empiricism,  61;  materialism  indicated  by  doctrine  of 

mind,  69;  relativity,  65;  relation  to  theism  and  religion,  60; 

theory  of  evolution,  67;  supported  by  fallacy  of  universal,  68 
Spinoza,  personal  sincerity,  19 
Spiritual  basis  of  life,  28 

Spiritual,  incapable  of  expression  in  language,  23 
Spirituality,  impossible  apart  from  personality,  22 
Stoics,  preservation  of  atomism,  54 
Swinburne,  quoted,  "watch  in  the  night,"  38,  45 

Time  as  "bastard  space,"  150f.;  as  "duration,"  148-152; 
with  God  as  ground  of  its  "duration,"  158ff.;  impossible 
except  to  abiding  intelligence,  88,  122,  138f.;  152,  159f. 

Time  and  space  as  forms  of  thought,  87f.;  ideal  yet  objectively 
valid,  137£F.,  150f.;  as  viewed  by  Bowne,  137f. 

Truth,  universal  validity  of,  in  Eucken's  view,  170f. 

206 


INDEX 

Unity,  by  "activism,"  Euckcn's  solution,  170f. ;  found  only 
in  mind  and  spirit,  22;  necessary  even  to  pluralism,  124, 
134;  possible  through  personality,  134f.,  153f.,  156f.,  183f.; 
by  primal  impulse;  Aristotle's  view,  78f.;  Bergson's  view, 
147f,  154ff.;  problem  of,  21,  49f.,  133f.,  147f.,  156f.,  170f., 
183f.;  struggle  for,  38,  49;  in  Greek  thought,  50 

Utilitarianism,  demanded  in  life,  37 

"Vital  impulse,"  Bergson's  necessary  factor  of  evolution, 
152ff.;  Bergson's  ground  of  being,  147f. 

World-Ground  must  be  personal,  81f. 


207 


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